Traumatic brain injury (TBI) produces life-long disabilities including anxiety, balance and cognitive impairments. Our objective was to perform longitudinal (acute to chronic) in-vivo evaluation of TBI-induced diffuse axonal injury (DAI), microbleeds, a...

Understanding the anatomy of the human olfactory tracts is important to understanding their function in health and disease. This is especially important in cases of neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, where olfactory...

Moll, J., Weingartner, J. H., Bado, P., Basilio, R., Sato, J. R., Melo, B. R., et al. (2014). Voluntary enhancement of neural signatures of affiliative emotion using fMRI neurofeedback. PLoS ONE 9:e97343. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0097343

Despite a clear somatotopic organization of the motor cortex, a movement can be learned with one extremity and performed with another. This suggests that there exists a limb-independent coding for movements. To dissociate brain regions coding for movement parameters from those relevant to the chosen effector, subjects wrote their signature with their dominant index finger and ipsilateral big toe, and we determined those areas activated by both conditions using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results show that movement parameters for this highly trained movement are stored in secondary sensorimotor cortices of the extremity with which it is usually performed, i.e., the dominant hand, including dorsal and ventral lateral premotor cortices. These areas can be accessed by the foot and are therefore functionally independent from the primary representation of the effector. Thus, somatotopy in secondary structures in the human motor system seems to be defined functionally, and not on the basis of anato...

Neuronal activity has been measured with imaging modalities such as EEG, MEG, and fMRI, which have limited spatial and/or temporal resolution. Many researchers have tried to directly detect the neuronal activity using MRI, which is different from the he...

Multi-channel MRI head coils offer improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), providing higher resolution images and stronger functional activation. Findings suggest that while global tissue contrast remains similar, SNR and bias fields (i.e., spatially vary...

Grey matter thickness derived from high-resolution magnetic resonance images is a useful non-invasive method of characterizing a macroscopic property of the cerebral cortex. When combined with an atlas of the species in question, these measurements can ...

The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) is increasingly being used as a model organism for primate neuroscience research. Establishing the mesoscopic structural mapping of the marmoset brain is essential for future mapping of the neural circuitry, stru...

Functional MRI based on the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast in gradient echo images has been used to monitor cerebral activation in response to peripheral stimuli in rat. No previous report on functional MRI during peripheral stimulation is available for mice. Functional MRI experiments were performed in rats and in mice using a 4.7-Tesla MRI scanner. Periodical electric stimulation (10-15 sec. stimulation, 40-60 sec. rest) was delivered at 3 Hz via bipolar subcutaneous electrodes during α-Chloralose anesthesia, artificial ventilation and complete muscle relaxation as reported earlier (Spenger et al., Exp Neurol 2000, 166:1102). Data were obtained in single and multislice experiments using spiral gradient echo MR imaging. We could thus improve the time resolution to 300 ms per image, which is approximately 13 times faster than conventional gradient echo imaging. In rats, the rise time for the BOLD response was found to be in the range of 4 sec. The BOLD signal was usually followed by an u...

Human episodic memory is supported by networks of white matter tracts that connect frontal, temporal, and parietal regions. Degradation of white matter microstructure is increasingly recognized as a general mechanism of cognitive deterioration with aging. However, atrophy of gray matter regions also occurs and, to date, the potential role of specific white matter connections has been largely ignored. Changes to frontotemporal tracts may be important for the decline of episodic memory; while frontotemporal cooperation is known to be critical, the precise pathways of interaction are unknown. Diffusion-weighted MRI tractography was used to reconstruct three candidate fasciculi known to link components of memory networks: the fornix, the parahippocampal cingulum, and the uncinate fasciculus. Age-related changes in the microstructure of these tracts were investigated in 40 healthy older adults between the ages of 53 and 93 years. The relationships between aging, microstructure, and episodic memory were assessed...