A. Kleinschmidt et al., CORRELATIONAL IMAGING OF THALAMOCORTICAL COUPLING IN THE PRIMARY VISUAL PATHWAY OF THE HUMAN BRAIN, Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism, 14(6), 1994, pp. 952-957
While the anatomy of the human brain is well defined, the functional c
onnectivity of its structures is far less understood. Modern neuroimag
ing techniques offer the unique opportunity of visualizing physiologic
activation in central nervous structures and of identifying the eleme
nts underlying distributed networks for information processing. Follow
ing improved spatial resolution of deoxyhemoglobin-sensitive magnetic
resonance imaging, we were able to detect simultaneous signal changes
in the lateral geniculate nucleus and primary visual cortex during per
iodic photic stimulation. Visualization of coupled activation by cross
-correlation analysis resulted in the first demonstration of thalamoco
rtical interaction in the primary visual pathway of the intact human b
rain.