White matter microstructure between the pre‐SMA and the cingulum bundle is related to response conflict in healthy subjects

Brain and Behavior

Maeri Yamamoto¹  Itaru Kushima¹  Hiroki Kimura¹  Akiko Hayashi¹  Naoko Kawano¹  Branko Aleksic¹  Tetsuya Iidaka¹ 

[1] Department of Psychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

关键词: Attention;    connectivity;    diffusion tractography;    fractional anisotropy;    functional MRI;   

DOI  :  10.1002/brb3.375

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

Introduction

Response conflict involves selectively attending to relevant information and suppressing distracting, irrelevant information. The medial frontal cortex (MFC) is considered to be involved in response conflict. However, it remains unclear which white matter connectivity is associated with response conflict. This study aimed to delineate the neural connectivity of response conflict in healthy subjects and investigate the association between white matter microstructure and performance of a response conflict task.

Method

Twenty-eight healthy subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the Flanker task and diffusion MRI. We identified the presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA) using fMRI. Furthermore, we delineated the white matter connectivity between the pre-SMA and the cingulum bundle (CB), which is located in the MFC, using probabilistic tractography. We calculated the mean diffusivity (MD), index of white matter microstructure, of this tract and evaluate the association between MD and performance of the Flanker task.

Result

The mean MD of this tract was significantly and positively associated with performance of the Flanker task.

Conclusion

The present study suggests the white matter connectivity between the pre-SMA and the CB is related to the response conflict in healthy subjects and finer white matter microstructure is associated with smaller response conflict.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.