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Abstract #2085

Validation of in vivo structural template of human brainstem nuclei by fMRI at 7 Tesla

Marta Bianciardi 1 , Nicola Toschi 1,2 , Cornelius Eichner 1 , Kawin Setsompop 1 , Jonathan R. Polimeni 1 , Bruce R. Rosen 1 , and Lawrence L. Wald 1

1 Department of Radiology, A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, MGH and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, 2 Medical Physics Section, Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, Faculty of Medicine, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

The aim of this work was to validate our recently developed in-vivo structural template of human brainstem-nuclei (Bn) of the ascending-arousal, autonomic and motor systems by 1.1mm-isotropic fMRI at 7Tesla. For each of the 18 Bn-labels of the structural template, a spatially matched functional parcel in the brainstem was identified by ICA. Our results also showed that structural Bn-labels were functionally connected to specific brain regions as expected from previous work. This work provides a preliminary validation of the in-vivo structural Bn template, which is a key step towards its use in future studies of human brainstem function and pathology.

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