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Abstract #0723

Contralateral cortico-ponto-cerebellar pathways with prominent involvement of associative areas in humans in vivo

Andrea De Rinaldis 1,2 , Fulvia Palesi 2,3 , Gloria Castellazzi 1,2 , Fernando Calamante 4,5 , Nils Muhlert 6,7 , J Donald Tournier 4,5 , Giovanni Magenes 1 , Egidio D'Angelo 2,8 , and Claudia AM Wheeler-Kingshott 6

1 Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Pavia, PV, Italy, 2 Brain Connectivity Center, C. Mondino National Neurological Institute, Pavia, PV, Italy, 3 Department of Physics, University of Pavia, Pavia, PV, Italy, 4 The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne Brain Centre, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia, 5 Department of Medicine, Austin Health and Northern Health, University of Melbourne, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia, 6 NMR Research Unit, Department of Neuroinflammation, Queen Square MS Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, England, United Kingdom, 7 Department of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, 8 Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, PV, Italy

Cerebellar involvement in cognition is becoming increasingly evident; this is thought to occur through the cerebello-cortical loop, composed of two main pathways: an efferent cerebello-thalamo-cortical pathway and an afferent cortico-ponto-cerebellar pathway. The former has already been reconstructed in vivo using probabilistic tractography. We applied the same method to reconstruct the latter pathway and to describe it both anatomically and quantitatively. The main finding is that most of the cortico-ponto-cerebellar streamlines connect cerebral associative areas with their cerebellar cognitive counterpart. This result improves our understanding of cerebello-cortical connections and provide a plausible pathway through which the cerebellum can influence cognition.

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