Macaque Area V2/V3 Reorganization Following Homonymous Retinal Lesions.

In the adult visual system, topographic reorganization of the primary visual cortex (V1) after retinal lesions has been extensively investigated. In contrast, the plasticity of higher order extrastriate areas following retinal lesions is less well studied. Here, we used fMRI to study reorganization of visual areas V2/V3 following the induction of permanent, binocular, homonymous retinal lesions in 4 adult macaque monkeys.

Nanostructure-specific X-ray tomography reveals myelin levels, integrity and axon orientations in mouse and human nervous tissue.

Myelin insulates neuronal axons and enables fast signal transmission, constituting a key component of brain development, aging and disease. Yet, myelin-specific imaging of macroscopic samples remains a challenge. Here, we exploit myelin's nanostructural periodicity, and use small-angle X-ray scattering tensor tomography (SAXS-TT) to simultaneously quantify myelin levels, nanostructural integrity and axon orientations in nervous tissue.

Validation of High-Resolution Tractography Against In Vivo Tracing in the Macaque Visual Cortex.

Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allows for the noninvasive in vivo examination of anatomical connections in the human brain, which has an important role in understanding brain function. Validation of this technique is vital, but has proved difficult due to the lack of an adequate gold standard. In this work, the macaque visual system was used as a model as an extensive body of literature of in vivo and postmortem tracer studies has established a detailed understanding of the underlying connections.

Unravelling cerebellar pathways with high temporal precision targeting motor and extensive sensory and parietal networks.

Increasing evidence has implicated the cerebellum in providing forward models of motor plants predicting the sensory consequences of actions. Assuming that cerebellar input to the cerebral cortex contributes to the cerebro-cortical processing by adding forward model signals, we would expect to find projections emphasising motor and sensory cortical areas. However, this expectation is only partially met by studies of cerebello-cerebral connections.

Activation of SC during electrical stimulation of LGN: retinal antidromic stimulation or corticocollicular activation?

We have recently used combined electrostimulation, neurophysiology, microinjection and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the cortical activity patterns elicited during stimulation of cortical afferents in monkeys. We found that stimulation of a site in lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) increases the fMRI signal in the regions of primary visual cortex receiving input from that site, but suppresses it in the retinotopically matched regions of extrastriate cortex. Intracortical injection experiments showed that such suppression is due to synaptic inhibition.

esfMRI of the upper STS: further evidence for the lack of electrically induced polysynaptic propagation of activity in the neocortex.

Combining electrical stimulation with fMRI (esfMRI) has proven to be an important tool to study the global effects of electrical stimulation on neural networks in the brain. Here we extend our previous studies to stimulating the upper superior temporal sulcus (STS) in the anesthetized monkey. Our results show that stimulating area V5/MT and surrounding areas leads to positive BOLD responses in the majority of cortical areas known to receive direct/monosynaptic connections from the stimulation site.

The effects of electrical microstimulation on cortical signal propagation.

Electrical stimulation has been used in animals and humans to study potential causal links between neural activity and specific cognitive functions. Recently, it has found increasing use in electrotherapy and neural prostheses. However, the manner in which electrical stimulation-elicited signals propagate in brain tissues remains unclear.

Brain hemispheric structural efficiency and interconnectivity rightward asymmetry in human and nonhuman primates.

Evidence for interregional structural asymmetries has been previously reported for brain anatomic regions supporting well-described functional lateralization. Here, we aimed to investigate whether the two brain hemispheres demonstrate dissimilar general structural attributes implying different principles on information flow management. Common left hemisphere/right hemisphere structural network properties are estimated and compared for right-handed healthy human subjects and a nonhuman primate, by means of 3 different diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging fiber tractography algorithms and a graph theory framework.

In vivo chlorine-35, sodium-23 and proton magnetic resonance imaging of the rat brain.

In this study we demonstrate the feasibility of combined chlorine-35, sodium-23 and proton magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 9.4 Tesla, and present the first in vivo chlorine-35 images obtained by means of MRI. With the experimental setup used in this study all measurements could be done in one session without changing the setup or moving the subject.

Relationship between neural and hemodynamic signals during spontaneous activity studied with temporal kernel CCA.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) based on the so-called blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) contrast is a powerful tool for studying brain function not only locally but also on the large scale. Most studies assume a simple relationship between neural and BOLD activity, in spite of the fact that it is important to elucidate how the "when" and "what" components of neural activity are correlated to the "where" of fMRI data. Here we conducted simultaneous recordings of neural and BOLD signal fluctuations in primary visual (V1) cortex of anesthetized monkeys.

In vivo(39)K, (23)Na and (1)H MR imaging using a triple resonant RF coil setup.

The maintenance of a gradient of potassium and sodium ions across the cell membranes is essential for the physiological function of the mammal organism. The measurement of the spatial distribution of pathologically changing ion concentrations of (23)Na and (39)K with magnetic resonance imaging offers a promising approach in clinical diagnostics to measure tissue viability. Existing studies were focused mainly on (23)Na imaging as well as spectroscopy with only one post-mortem study for (39)K imaging.

Visually driven activation in macaque areas V2 and V3 without input from the primary visual cortex.

Creating focal lesions in primary visual cortex (V1) provides an opportunity to study the role of extra-geniculo-striate pathways for activating extrastriate visual cortex. Previous studies have shown that more than 95% of neurons in macaque area V2 and V3 stop firing after reversibly cooling V1. However, no studies on long term recovery in areas V2, V3 following permanent V1 lesions have been reported in the macaque.

How not to study spontaneous activity.

Brains are restless. We have long known of the existence of a great deal of uninterrupted brain activity that maintains the body in a stable state--from an evolutionary standpoint one of the brain's most ancient tasks. But intrinsic, ongoing activity is not limited to subcortical, life-maintaining structures; cortex, too, is remarkably active even in the absence of a sensory stimulus or a specific behavioral task.

Optimizing the imaging of the monkey auditory cortex: sparse vs. continuous fMRI.

The noninvasive imaging of the monkey auditory system with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can bridge the gap between electrophysiological studies in monkeys and imaging studies in humans. Some of the recent imaging of monkey auditory cortical and subcortical structures relies on a technique of "sparse imaging," which was developed in human studies to sidestep the negative influence of scanner noise by adding periods of silence in between volume acquisition. Among the various aspects that have gone into the ongoing optimization of fMRI of the monkey auditory cortex, replacing the more common continuous-imaging paradigm with sparse imaging seemed to us to make the most obvious difference in the amount of activity that we could reliably obtain from awake or anesthetized animals.

fMRI measurements of color in macaque and human.

We have used fMRI to measure responses to chromatic and achromatic contrast in retinotopically defined regions of macaque and human visual cortex. We make four observations. Firstly, the relative amplitudes of responses to color and luminance stimuli in macaque area V1 are similar to those previously observed in human fMRI experiments.

A voice region in the monkey brain.

For vocal animals, recognizing species-specific vocalizations is important for survival and social interactions. In humans, a voice region has been identified that is sensitive to human voices and vocalizations. As this region also strongly responds to speech, it is unclear whether it is tightly associated with linguistic processing and is thus unique to humans.

Pharmacological MRI combined with electrophysiology in non-human primates: effects of Lidocaine on primary visual cortex.

Pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) is a current direction in biomedical imaging, whose goal is the non-invasive monitoring of pharmacological manipulations on brain processes. We have developed techniques combining phMRI with simultaneous monitoring of electrophysiological activity during local injections of pharmacological agents into defined brain regions. We have studied effects of the local anesthetic Lidocaine on BOLD activity in primary visual cortex (V1) of non-human primates.

BOLD sensitivity to cortical activation induced by microstimulation: comparison to visual stimulation.

Electrical microstimulation via intracortical electrodes is a widely used method for deducing functions of the brain. In this study, we compared the spatial extent and amplitude of BOLD responses evoked by intracortical electrical stimulation in primary visual cortex with BOLD activations evoked by visual stimulation. The experiments were performed in anesthetized rhesus monkeys.

Simultaneous recording of neuronal signals and functional NMR imaging.

We recently directly examined the relationship between blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals and neural activity by simultaneously acquiring electrophysiological and fMRI data from monkeys in a 4.7-T vertical scanner (Logothetis NK, Pauls J, Augath MA, Trinath T, Oeltermann A. Neurophysiological investigation of the basis of the fMRI signal.

Functional imaging reveals visual modulation of specific fields in auditory cortex.

Merging the information from different senses is essential for successful interaction with real-life situations. Indeed, sensory integration can reduce perceptual ambiguity, speed reactions, or change the qualitative sensory experience. It is widely held that integration occurs at later processing stages and mostly in higher association cortices; however, recent studies suggest that sensory convergence can occur in primary sensory cortex.

Spatial specificity of BOLD versus cerebral blood volume fMRI for mapping cortical organization.

Intravascular contrast agents are used in functional magnetic resonance imaging to obtain cerebral blood volume (CBV) maps of cortical activity. Cerebral blood volume imaging with MION (monocrystalline-iron-oxide-nanoparticles) increases the sensitivity of functional imaging compared with the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal (Leite et al, 2002; Mandeville et al, 1998; Vanduffel et al, 2001). It therefore represents an attractive method for obtaining detailed maps of cortical organization (Vanduffel et al, 2001; Zhao et al, 2005).

Functional imaging reveals numerous fields in the monkey auditory cortex.

Anatomical studies propose that the primate auditory cortex contains more fields than have actually been functionally confirmed or described. Spatially resolved functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with carefully designed acoustical stimulation could be ideally suited to extend our understanding of the processing within these fields. However, after numerous experiments in humans, many auditory fields remain poorly characterized.

Development of visually evoked cortical activity in infant macaque monkeys studied longitudinally with fMRI.

We studied the development of visual activation longitudinally in two infant monkeys aged 103-561 days using the BOLD fMRI technique under opiate anesthesia and compared the results with those obtained in three adult animals studied under identical conditions. Visual activation in primary visual cortex, V1, was strong and reliable in monkeys of the youngest and oldest ages, showing that functional imaging techniques give qualitatively similar results in infants and adults. Visual activation in extrastriate areas involved in processing motion (MT/V5) and form (V4) was not evident in the younger animals, but became more adult-like in the older animals.

Tracing neural circuits in vivo with Mn-enhanced MRI.

The application of MRI-visible paramagnetic tracers to reveal in vivo connectivity can provide important subject-specific information for multisite, multielectrode intracortical recordings in combined behavioral and physiology experiments. To establish the use of such tracers in the nonhuman primate, we recently compared the specificity of the anterograde tracer Mn2+ with that of wheat-germ-agglutinin conjugated to horseradish peroxidase (WGA-HRP) in experiments tracing the neuronal connections of the basal ganglia of the monkey. It was shown that Mn2+ and WGA-HRP yield the same projection patterns and that the former tracer crosses at least two synapses, for it could be found in thalamus following injections into the striatum.