Mapping Dorsal and Ventral Caudate in Older Adults: Method and Validation

Abstract

The caudate nucleus plays important roles in cognition and affect. Depending on associated connectivity and function, the caudate can be further divided into dorsal and ventral aspects. Dorsal caudate, highly connected to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), is implicated in executive function and working memory; ventral caudate, more interconnected with the limbic system, is implicated in affective functions such as pain processing. Clinically, certain brain disorders are known to differentially impact dorsal and ventral caudate. Thus, precise parcellation of caudate has both basic and clinical neuroscience significance. In young adults, past work has combined resting-state fMRI functional connectivity with clustering algorithms to define dorsal and ventral caudate. Whether the same approach is effective in older adults and how to validate the parcellation results have not been considered. We addressed these problems by obtaining resting-state fMRI data from 56 older non-demented adults (age: 69.07 ± 5.92 years and MOCA: 25.71 ± 2.46) along with a battery of cognitive and clinical assessments. Connectivity from each voxel of caudate to the rest of the brain was computed using cross correlation. Applying the K-means clustering algorithm to the connectivity patterns with K = 2 yielded two substructures within caudate, which agree well with previously reported dorsal and ventral divisions of caudate. Furthermore, dorsal-caudate-seeded functional connectivity was shown to be more strongly associated with working memory and fluid reasoning composite scores, whereas ventral-caudate-seeded functional connectivity more strongly associated with pain and fatigue severity. These results demonstrate that dorsal and ventral caudate can be reliably identified by combining resting-state fMRI and clustering algorithms in older adults.

Brain circuits involved in understanding our own and other’s internal states in the context of romantic relationships

“…Activations identified when hearing to contents expressed by their partner for (a) self-condition higher than the other condition or (b) other-condition higher than the self-condition. and the ventral caudate was significantly correlated with affective functions (Huang et al, 2017). Finally, regarding the valence of the video-vignettes, in our study the neural response to positive vignettes was more evident than the response to negative vignettes.…”

“…Specifically, we found a higher activation in the left ventral caudate in the self-condition when participants were watching negative vignettes. Although the role of the caudate nucleus for self-referential processing remains unclear, previous evidence has shown that the left ventral caudate region is functionally connected to the posterior insula (Di Martino et al, 2008;Huang et al, 2017), a region known for interoceptive processing and affect sharing (Craig, 2003;Singer et al, 2004). In line with this result, recent evidence has shown that the functional connectivity between the posterior insula .…”

Resting state functional connectivity of networks associated with reward and habit in anorexia nervosa

“…In this study, we expanded upon the literature on the neural systems implicated in reward-and habit-based learning in AN by examining RSFC along the ventral (affective) to dorsal (cognitive) functional organization of the striatum (Di Martino et al, 2008;Huang et al, 2017) Exploratory analyses suggested that these abnormal patterns of connectivity might be associated with the expression of clinical symptoms in AN-R, with NAcc-SFG hypoconnectivity especially linked to cognitive eating disorder symptoms.…”

“…The striatum is functionally organized such that more ventrally located regions, such as the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and ventral regions of the caudate, demonstrate more limbic connectivity and greater associations with indices of reward responding (Di Martino et al, 2008; Huang et al, 2017). On the other hand, the dorsal regions of the striatum, including the dorsal caudate, are more interconnected with prefrontal regions and implicated in motor and cognitive functions, including habitual responding.…”

“…with indices of reward responding (Di Martino et al, 2008;Huang et al, 2017). On the other hand, the dorsal regions of the striatum, including the dorsal caudate, are more interconnected with prefrontal regions and implicated in motor and cognitive functions, including habitual responding.…”