Journal Article

Parcellation of human amygdalain vivousing ultra high field structural MRI

Solano-Castiella, Eugenia, Schäfer, Andreas, Lohmann, Gabriele, Trampel, Robert, Pröger, Thomas, Türke, Erik, Reimer, Enrico, Turner, Robert

2011

Overview

Histological studies show that human amygdala is subdivided into several nuclei with specific connections to other brain areas. One such study has been recently used as the basis of a probabilistic amygdala map, to enablein vivoidentification of specifically located functions within the amygdala and connections to it. The involvement of the amygdala in cognition, emotion and action, which may underlie several psychiatric disorders, points to a need for discrimination of these nuclei in living human brains using different techniques. Structural MRI scans of the human amygdala at standard field strengths (<=3T) have shown a region of generally featureless gray matter. Apparently homogeneous regions may reveal internal structure, however, when improved imaging strategies and better SNR are available. The goal of this study is thein vivoanatomical segmentation of the amygdala using high resolution structural MR data. The use of different MRI tissue contrast mechanisms at high field strengths has been little explored so far. Combining two different contrasts, and using cutting-edge image analysis, the following study provides a robust clustering of three amygdala componentsin vivousing 7T structural imaging.

• Publisher: Elsevier Limited
• Subject: Brain / Cell adhesion & migration / Noise / Studies