Resting state networks in human cervical spinal cord observed with fMRI

Wei, Pengxu; Li, Jianjun; Gao, Feng; De-rong, YE; Zhong, Qin; Liu, Shujia

doi:10.1007/s00421-009-1205-4

Cited by 38 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Spinal cord fMRI has primarily been used to study motor and sensory/pain pathways in the healthy spinal cord, but has also been shown to be sensitive to changes in patients with spinal cord injury (Stroman et al, 2002, 2004; Kornelsen and Stroman, 2007) and multiple sclerosis (Agosta et al, 2008a, 2008b, 2009b; Valsasina et al, 2010, 2012). Importantly, these spinal fMRI studies were focused on understanding spinal cord function when performing tasks, and to date only one paper has reported an investigation of resting state BOLD fluctuations in the human spinal cord, from which the results were equivocal (Wei et al, 2010). Partly, the lack of positive reports may reflect the relatively poor signal-to-noise ratio of spinal cord images achievable at conventional field strengths (1.5 Tesla and 3.0 Tesla) and the inherent limitations of low spatial resolution in studying small structures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resting state functional connectivity in the human spinal cord

Barry

Smith

Dula

et al. 2014

eLife

104

165

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Functional magnetic resonance imaging using blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast is well established as one of the most powerful methods for mapping human brain function. Numerous studies have measured how low-frequency BOLD signal fluctuations from the brain are correlated between voxels in a resting state, and have exploited these signals to infer functional connectivity within specific neural circuits. However, to date there have been no previous substantiated reports of resting state correlations in the spinal cord. In a cohort of healthy volunteers, we observed robust functional connectivity between left and right ventral (motor) horns, and between left and right dorsal (sensory) horns. Our results demonstrate that low-frequency BOLD fluctuations are inherent in the spinal cord as well as the brain, and by analogy to cortical circuits, we hypothesize that these correlations may offer insight into the execution and maintenance of sensory and motor functions both locally and within the cerebrum.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02812.001

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resting state functional connectivity in the human spinal cord

Barry

Smith

Dula

et al. 2014

eLife

104

165

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the absence of a stimulus or task, fluctuations in neuronal activity in the spinal cord have been detected by means of functional MRI, and are thought to provide important information about networks of regions across the CNS [2–4]. However, due to methodological challenges very few “resting-state” fMRI studies have been carried out in the spinal cord and no specific networks have been identified.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, due to methodological challenges very few “resting-state” fMRI studies have been carried out in the spinal cord and no specific networks have been identified. It has been speculated that the source of resting-state fluctuations (RSF) may be linked to brain resting-state networks, muscle coordination, and/or descending regulation of sensory signaling [2–4]. Smith and Kornelsen [5] showed variations in blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) fMRI signal in the cord when participants viewed negative, positive, and neutral pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) database.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continuous Descending Modulation of the Spinal Cord Revealed by Functional MRI

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spontaneous variations in spinal cord activity may arise from regulation of any of a number of functions including sensory, motor, and autonomic control. Here, we use functional MRI (fMRI) of healthy participants to identify properties of blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) variations in the spinal cord in response to knowledge that either a noxious stimulus is impending, or that no stimulus is to be expected. Expectation of a noxious stimulus, or no stimulus, is shown to have a significant effect on wide-spread BOLD signal variations in the spinal cord over the entire time period of the fMRI acquisition. Coordination of BOLD responses between/within spinal cord and brainstem regions are also influenced by this knowledge. We provide evidence that such signal variations are the result of continuous descending modulation of spinal cord function. BOLD signal variations in response to noxious stimulation of the hand are also shown, as in previous studies. The observation of both continuous and reactive BOLD responses to emotional/cognitive factors and noxious peripheral stimulation may have important implications, not only for our understanding of endogenous pain modulation, but also in showing that spinal cord activity is under continuous regulatory control.

show abstract

“…Distinct spatial maps due to cardiac and respiratory noise sources have been revealed by single subject ICA (25)(26)(27), and a seed-based approach demonstrated correlations between ventral horns and between dorsal horns (28), but no group patterns of circumscribed motor or sensory networks have yet been found; also only a few investigations of task-based functional connectivity have been performed (29)(30)(31). One reason for the apparent lack…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Intrinsically organized resting state networks in the human spinal cord

Kong

Eippert

Beckmann

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spontaneous fluctuations in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals of the brain have repeatedly been observed when no task or external stimulation is present. These fluctuations likely reflect baseline neuronal activity of the brain and correspond to functionally relevant resting-state networks (RSN). It is not known however, whether intrinsically organized and spatially circumscribed RSNs also exist in the spinal cord, the brain's principal sensorimotor interface with the body. Here, we use recent advances in spinal fMRI methodology and independent component analysis to answer this question in healthy human volunteers. We identified spatially distinct RSNs in the human spinal cord that were clearly separated into dorsal and ventral components, mirroring the functional neuroanatomy of the spinal cord and likely reflecting sensory and motor processing. Interestingly, dorsal (sensory) RSNs were separated into right and left components, presumably related to ongoing hemibody processing of somatosensory information, whereas ventral (motor) RSNs were bilateral, possibly related to commissural interneuronal networks involved in central pattern generation. Importantly, all of these RSNs showed a restricted spatial extent along the spinal cord and likely conform to the spinal cord's functionally relevant segmental organization. Although the spatial and temporal properties of the dorsal and ventral RSNs were found to be significantly different, these networks showed significant interactions with each other at the segmental level. Together, our data demonstrate that intrinsically highly organized resting-state fluctuations exist in the human spinal cord and are thus a hallmark of the entire central nervous system. fMRI | spinal cord | resting state | connectivity | networks F unctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to study the functional connectivity of the human brain, with spontaneous fluctuations in the resting-state fMRI signal (1-3) attracting much attention in the past few years (for review, see refs. 4-6). Brain regions showing temporally coherent spontaneous fluctuations constitute several anatomically consistent "resting state networks" (RSNs), such as visual, auditory, sensorymotor, executive control, and default mode networks (7-11). Consequently, analyses of RSNs are rapidly emerging as a powerful tool for in vivo mapping of neural circuitry in the human brain and one such approach for exploring RSNs is independent component analysis (ICA) (12)(13)(14). ICA decomposes the data into spatially independent and temporally coherent source signals/ components. The advantage of ICA over more traditional seedbased approaches (15) is that it is a model-free, data-driven multiple-regression approach, i.e., within the ICA framework we can account for multiple underlying signal contributions (artifactual or neuronal in origin) simultaneously and thereby disentangle these different contributions to the measured observations (16). To date, ICA has been used not only to characterize brain con...

show abstract

Resting state networks in human cervical spinal cord observed with fMRI

Cited by 38 publications

References 31 publications

Resting state functional connectivity in the human spinal cord

Resting state functional connectivity in the human spinal cord

Continuous Descending Modulation of the Spinal Cord Revealed by Functional MRI

Intrinsically organized resting state networks in the human spinal cord

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About