Functional Connectivity of the Posteromedial Cortex

Abstract

As different areas within the PMC have different connectivity patterns with various cortical and subcortical regions, we hypothesized that distinct functional modules may be present within the PMC. Because the PMC appears to be the most active region during resting state, it has been postulated to play a fundamental role in the control of baseline brain functioning within the default mode network (DMN). Therefore one goal of this study was to explore which components of the PMC are specifically involved in the DMN. In a sample of seventeen healthy volunteers, we performed an unsupervised voxelwise ROI-based clustering based on resting state functional connectivity. Our results showed four clusters with different network connectivity. Each cluster showed positive and negative correlations with cortical regions involved in the DMN. Progressive shifts in PMC functional connectivity emerged from anterior to posterior and from dorsal to ventral ROIs. Ventral posterior portions of PMC were found to be part of a network implicated in the visuo-spatial guidance of movements, whereas dorsal anterior portions of PMC were interlinked with areas involved in attentional control. Ventral retrosplenial PMC selectively correlated with a network showing considerable overlap with the DMN, indicating that it makes essential contributions in self-referential processing, including autobiographical memory processing. Finally, ventral posterior PMC was shown to be functionally connected with a visual network.The paper represents the first attempt to provide a systematic, unsupervised, voxelwise clustering of the human posteromedial cortex (PMC), using resting-state functional connectivity data. Moreover, a ROI-based parcellation was used to confirm the results.

Pattern, variability, and hemispheric differences of the subparietal sulcus on multiplanar reconstructed MR images

“…The adjacent cytoarchitectural region BA 31 is also considered a part of the precuneus and includes the posterior cingulate and precuneal cortices [3]. Recent studies have shown that the precuneus has widespread anatomical and functional connections between the somatosensory and visual cortices, over the posterior cingulate and retrosplenial cortices [2,16,30,31]. The dorsal anterior precuneus has strong connections with the cingulate motor areas and superior parietal cortex, similar to the dorsal posterior precuneus with the POS and cuneus, and the ventral precuneus with the dorsolateral parietal cortex, inferior parietal lobule, posterior cingulate cortex, and the superior temporal sulcus [16,30].…”

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience

“…This is an architectonically discrete region, which has been often understudied because of its anatomical location (Cavanna and Trimble 2006). Interestingly, this complex area has been just recently identified as the most active brain region during the socalled 'resting state' (Cauda et al 2010)-that state when brain activity is measured in the absence of a task or experimental stimuli (Mastrovito 2013). Positron Emission Tomography (PET) studies, which are able to couple functional analyses with metabolic ones (for a methodological overview, see Massaro 2015), showed that PMC consumes about 40 % more glucose than the hemispheric mean, providing support for this view (Raichle et al 2001).…”

Cerebellar Clustering and Functional Connectivity During Pain Processing

“…We usedSelf-organizinggroup-levelICA(SogICA, [29]) to summarize individual decomposed data sets on a group level and put together similar components between subjects [30] The clusters, obtainedfrom the group analysis, were carefully examined to keep only the significant clusters unrelated to residual physiological or movement artefacts.…”