Abstract #0636

Resting State Functional Connectivity is Sensitive to Layer-specific Connectional Architecture in Cortical Columns

Yun Wang¹, Jennifer Robinson^1,2,3, and Gopikrishna Deshpande^1,2,3

¹AU MRI Research Center, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States, ²Department of Psychology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States, ³Alabama Advanced Imaging Consortium,Auburn University and University of Alabama Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States

We investigated whether resting-state functional connectivity (FC) is sensitive to cortical layer-specific connectional differences using high resolution resting-state fMRI data obtained from healthy humans at 7T. Based on rat tracing studies, we hypothesized that FC between the thalamus and cortical layer I must be significantly greater than between the thalamus and other layers. Our results support this hypothesis. Further, there were no global connectivity differences between layers, ruling out artifactual influences from vasculature. This also opens the future possibility of microscopic investigations of the brain connectome using ultra-high field fMRI and will likely move the field away from blobology.

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