Abstract #4494

Structural connectome of autonomic and sensory brainstem nuclei in humans based on 7 Tesla high spatial and angular resolution diffusion imaging

KAVITA SINGH¹, María Guadalupe García-Gomar¹, Jeffery P Staab^2,3, Simone Cauzzo⁴, Iole Indovina^5,6, and Marta Bianciardi¹

¹Brainstem Imaging Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ²Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States, ³Department of Otolaryngology, Head and neck Surgery, Mayo clinic, Rochester, MN, United States, ⁴Institute of Life Sciences, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy, ⁵Laboratory of neuromotor physiology, IRCCS, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy, ⁶Centre of SpaceBiomedicine, University of Rome for Vergata, Rome, Italy

With the advancement of imaging technologies and signal processing tools, ample progress has been made in cortical and sub-cortical brain structural connectivity mapping; however, this is still missing in living humans for brainstem nuclei. Through high spatial-resolution 7 Tesla HARDI MRI and a recently developed probabilistic brainstem nuclei atlas, we built a structural connectome of autonomic and sensory brainstem nuclei in living humans. Interestingly, our connectome corresponded well with established non-human connectivity data. We foresee this connectome as basis for structural and functional studies of autonomic and sensory circuits in health and disease.

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