The thalamus is a primary station for information processing within the brain. It is composed of a collection of nuclei with different histological and functional properties, classified as First Order (FO, processing sensory input) or Higher Order (HO, playing associative roles). We used diffusion-weighted MRI (dMRI) to investigate microstructural properties of FO and HO thalamic nuclei, focusing on fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, and mean kurtosis derived from Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging (DKI). This initial evidence suggests that DKI might capture distinctive features of FO and HO thalamic nuclei, and paves the way to further studies investigating nucleus-specific microstructural effects with DKI.
This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.