The cerebral cortex is anatomically organized at many physical scales. This organization extends from the level of a neuron and its connections, collections of neurons into columns, collections of columns into functional areas or maps, and collections of areas into systems or networks. Current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques in humans focuses above the level of cells and columns, most often at the scale of functional areas and systems. Except in rare circumstances, e.g. topographically-organized sensory regions, it is difficult to determine areal boundaries in the human brain using fMRI. The ability to non- invasively delineate functional areas in greater extents of cortex would allow both within-subject definition of separate areas of cortex, and allow for more appropriate comparison of areas across subjects, enhancing the precision of many types of both functional and structural studies, including those investigating special populations such as infants/children and patients. Preliminary measures of resting correlated activity, so-called resting state functional connectivity (fcMRI), show strong localized differences in correlation strength across expanses of cortex. This observation provides hope that, in similar fashion to connectional anatomy in non-human primates, fcMRI measures could aid in the definition of functional area boundaries in the human brain.
Aim 1 : To develop methods to define functional area boundaries using resting state fcMRI. We will utilize the relatively new metric of resting state fcMRI to define boundaries between putative functional areas based on abrupt changes in the correlation profiles of adjacent points in fcMRI data. Various image processing strategies (e.g., edge detection and image segmentation algorithms) will be used to produce maps of fcMRI-derived boundaries that circumscribe putative functional areas in the cortex.
Aim 2 : To validate methods using multiple converging tests. After putative fcMRI boundary maps are constructed, their reliability and validity will be tested using several converging approaches: 1) repeated within-subject examinations to test the reliability of fcMRI-derived boundaries;2) comparison of functionally-defined (fMRI) boundaries in topographically organized visual cortical regions with fcMRI-defined borders;3) Comparison of reliable functional activations (e.g. eye- movement and error-related activity) with fcMRI-defined regions to determine whether functional activations respect fcMRI-derived boundaries;4) examination of multiple subjects to test the generalizability of these maps.

Public Health Relevance

This grant proposes a series of methods development and validations for using a specific imaging measure, resting-state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging, to parcellate the cortex of the brain into individual functional regions in individual subjects. Successful developments would allow researchers to move beyond current macrostructural, stereotactic and combined methods to provide more accurate locations of functional areas. This would advance neuroimaging studies generally, but particularly in situations where individual or group variability would be high, such as development studies, and studies of neuropsychiatric and neurological disease including schizophrenia, depression, movement disorders, and stroke.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Type
Exploratory/Developmental Grants (R21)
Project #
5R21NS061144-02
Application #
7657426
Study Section
Cognitive Neuroscience Study Section (COG)
Program Officer
Babcock, Debra J
Project Start
2008-07-15
Project End
2011-06-30
Budget Start
2009-07-01
Budget End
2011-06-30
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2009
Total Cost
$166,250
Indirect Cost
Name
Washington University
Department
Neurology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
068552207
City
Saint Louis
State
MO
Country
United States
Zip Code
63130
Gordon, Evan M; Laumann, Timothy O; Adeyemo, Babatunde et al. (2017) Individual-specific features of brain systems identified with resting state functional correlations. Neuroimage 146:918-939
Potvin, Olivier; Dieumegarde, Louis; Duchesne, Simon et al. (2017) Freesurfer cortical normative data for adults using Desikan-Killiany-Tourville and ex vivo protocols. Neuroimage 156:43-64
Potvin, Olivier; Dieumegarde, Louis; Duchesne, Simon et al. (2017) Normative morphometric data for cerebral cortical areas over the lifetime of the adult human brain. Neuroimage 156:315-339
Gordon, Evan M; Laumann, Timothy O; Adeyemo, Babatunde et al. (2016) Generation and Evaluation of a Cortical Area Parcellation from Resting-State Correlations. Cereb Cortex 26:288-303
Dubis, Joseph W; Siegel, Joshua S; Neta, Maital et al. (2016) Tasks Driven by Perceptual Information Do Not Recruit Sustained BOLD Activity in Cingulo-Opercular Regions. Cereb Cortex 26:192-201
McAvoy, Mark; Mitra, Anish; Coalson, Rebecca S et al. (2016) Unmasking Language Lateralization in Human Brain Intrinsic Activity. Cereb Cortex 26:1733-46
Laumann, Timothy O; Gordon, Evan M; Adeyemo, Babatunde et al. (2015) Functional System and Areal Organization of a Highly Sampled Individual Human Brain. Neuron 87:657-70
Petersen, Steven E; Sporns, Olaf (2015) Brain Networks and Cognitive Architectures. Neuron 88:207-19
Neta, Maital; Miezin, Francis M; Nelson, Steven M et al. (2015) Spatial and temporal characteristics of error-related activity in the human brain. J Neurosci 35:253-66
Wig, Gagan S; Laumann, Timothy O; Cohen, Alexander L et al. (2014) Parcellating an individual subject's cortical and subcortical brain structures using snowball sampling of resting-state correlations. Cereb Cortex 24:2036-54

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