Resting-State Functional Connectivity, Probabilistic Diffusion Tensor Tractography, and Histological Delineation in the Human Thalamus

Dongyang Zhang¹, Joshua S. Shimony¹, Abraham Z. Snyder¹, Michael D. Fox¹, Mark W. Sansbury¹, Marcus E. Raichle¹

Resting-state functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI) and diffusion weighted imaging and tractography (DTI/DTT) were performed as measures of functional and structural connectivity of the human thalamocortical system. Five ROIs were drawn in cortex corresponding to prefrontal, parietal/occipital, motor/premotor, somatosensory, and temporal cortices. Connectivity was measured between cortical ROIs and voxels in the thalamus using spontaneous neuronal activity correlations from fcMRI and probabilistic tractography from DTI. Results from these two dissimilar approaches showed remarkably similar thalamic localization. fcMRI and DTT results were compared to gold standard histological atlas reconstructed in 3D volume and registered to the same space as our MR results.