Anatomical correlates of the functional organization in the human occipitotemporal cortex

Kim, Mina; Ducros, Mathieu; Carlson, Thomas; Ronen, Itamar; He, Sheng; Ugurbil, Kamil; Kim, Dae-Shik

doi:10.1016/j.mri.2005.12.005

« Previous Next »Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Volume 24, Issue 5 , Pages 583-590, June 2006

Anatomical correlates of the functional organization in the human occipitotemporal cortex

Mina Kim
- Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Mathieu Ducros
- Laboratoire de Neurophysiologie et Nouvelles Microscopies, ESPCI-INSERM EPI 00-02 Paris, France
Thomas Carlson
- Department of Psychology, Vision Sciences Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
- Department of Psychonomics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Itamar Ronen
- Center for Biomedical Imaging (CBI), Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University school of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118, USA
Sheng He
- Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Kamil Ugurbil
- Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Dae-Shik Kim
- Center for Biomedical Imaging (CBI), Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University school of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118, USA
- Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 617 414 2361; fax: +1 617 414 2362.

Received 30 June 2005; accepted 9 December 2005. published online 03 February 2006.

Abstract

The connectivity between functionally distinct areas in the human brain is unknown because of the limitations posed by current postmortem anatomical labeling techniques. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has previously been used to define large white matter tracts based on well-known anatomical landmarks in the living human brain. In the present study, we used DTI coupled with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess neuronal connections between human striate and functionally defined extrastriate ventral cortical areas. Functional areas were identified with conventional fMRI mapping procedures and then used as seeding points in a DTI analysis to ascertain connectivity patterns between cortical areas, thus yielding the pattern of connections between human occipitoventral visual areas in vivo.

Keywords: fMRI, DTI, Fiber tracking, Human ventral cortex