Aman Goyal1, Wendy Ringe2, Kaundinya Gopinath3,4, Lei Jiang3, Robert Haley4, Richard Briggs3,4
1Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 2Department of Psychiatry, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 3Department of Radiology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 4Department of Internal Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA
Resting state FcMRI networks were examined under 3 baseline conditions: resting eyes open, resting visual fixation and resting eyes open (Rest) with concurrent sub-threshold transcutaneous electrical stimulation (TENS), to examine the effects of study environment on the networks identified as associated with dorsal and ventral striatum resting fluctuations. Results indicate that TENS condition emphasizes connectivity of intention and attention networks to dorsal striatum better than Rest, but suppresses the expression of ventral striatal connectivity in ventroanterior prefrontal systems (highlighted clearly in Rest). Thus, the choice of the FcMRI baseline condition appears to have profound affects on connectivity.