In vivo tractography of human locus coeruleus—relation to 7T resting state fMRI, psychological measures and single subject validity

The locus coeruleus (LC) in the brainstem as the main regulator of brain noradrenaline gains increasing attention because of its involvement in neurologic and psychiatric diseases and its relevance in general to brain function. In this study, we created a structural connectome of the LC nerve fibers...

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Published inMolecular psychiatry Vol. 27; no. 12; pp. 4984 - 4993
Main Authors Liebe, Thomas, Kaufmann, Jörn, Hämmerer, Dorothea, Betts, Matthew, Walter, Martin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.12.2022
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects
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692/53/2421
Anxiety
Attention
Behavioral Sciences
Biological Psychology
Brain - physiology
Brain mapping
Brain research
Brain stem
Connectome - methods
Fibers
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Humans
Locus Coeruleus
Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Mental disorders
Mental health
Neural networks
Neurosciences
Norepinephrine
Parkinson's disease
Pharmacotherapy
Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Structure-function relationships
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Summary:The locus coeruleus (LC) in the brainstem as the main regulator of brain noradrenaline gains increasing attention because of its involvement in neurologic and psychiatric diseases and its relevance in general to brain function. In this study, we created a structural connectome of the LC nerve fibers based on in vivo MRI tractography to gain an understanding into LC connectivity and its impact on LC-related psychological measures. We combined our structural results with ultra-high field resting-state functional MRI to learn about the relationship between in vivo LC structural and functional connections. Importantly, we reveal that LC brain fibers are strongly associated with psychological measures of anxiety and alertness indicating that LC-noradrenergic connectivity may have an important role on brain function. Lastly, since we analyzed all our data in subject-specific space, we point out the potential of structural LC connectivity to reveal individual characteristics of LC-noradrenergic function on the single-subject level.
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ISSN:1359-4184
1476-5578
1476-5578
DOI:10.1038/s41380-022-01761-x