Confirmation of functional zones within the human subthalamic nucleus: Patterns of connectivity and sub-parcellation using diffusion weighted imaging

Christian Lambert, Ludvic Zrinzo, Zoltan Nagy, Antoine Lutti, Marwan Hariz, Thomas Foltynie, Bogdan Draganski, John Ashburner, Richard Frackowiak
2012 NeuroImage  
The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a small, glutamatergic nucleus situated in the diencephalon. A critical component of normal motor function, it has become a key target for deep brain stimulation in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. Animal studies have demonstrated the existence of three functional sub-zones but these have never been shown conclusively in humans. In this work, a data driven method with diffusion weighted imaging demonstrated that three distinct clusters exist within the
more » ... STN based on brain connectivity profiles. The STN was successfully sub-parcellated into these regions, demonstrating good correspondence with that described in the animal literature. The local connectivity of each sub-region supported the hypothesis of bilateral limbic, associative and motor regions occupying the anterior, mid and posterior portions of the nucleus respectively. This study is the first to achieve in-vivo, non-invasive anatomical parcellation of the human STN into three anatomical zones within normal diagnostic scan times, which has important future implications for deep brain stimulation surgery. Crown
doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.11.082 pmid:22173294 pmcid:PMC3315017 fatcat:7r332dafzrhn7f4vr25ekp2uce