Project description
Taking a closer look at the human subcortex
The human brain consists of densely connected networks of interacting areas and nuclei. While the cerebral cortex has been mapped with great precision, the incredibly complex functional organisation of the subcortex has yet to be fully unravelled. The EU-funded Deep Brain project will work to develop structural imaging of the subcortex to remove an important technical barrier. Specifically, ultra-high field 7 Tesla MRI and one of the three worldwide available Connectom MRIs will be used to investigate decision mechanisms in Deep Brain networks. Vital to survival, our ability to make everyday life decisions lies in the subcortex. The findings of this study will provide key insights into the learning, memory-guided, economic and perceptual decision-making processes.
Objective
Making everyday life decisions is vital to our survival and relies as much on cerebral cortex as on regions that reside Deep in our Brain, namely the subcortex. Studies on networks connecting small nuclei in the Deep Brain with cortical regions can provide key insights into learning, memory-guided, economic, and perceptual decision-making processes. However, the structural and functional organization of these processes is still incompletely understood, highlighting a knowledge gap in the field. The aim of this proposal is to reduce the gap in functional understanding by studying the mechanisms of different decision-making domains implemented in Deep Brain networks.
The human brain consists of densely connected networks of interacting areas and nuclei, and while the cerebral cortex has been mapped with great precision, research on the human subcortex has been relatively sidelined (Forstmann et al., Nat Rev Neurosci, 2017). The subcortex contains hundreds of small grey matter nuclei, which take up approximately 1/4th of the entire human brain volume. Importantly, only approximately 7% of these nuclei are currently accessible in standard human brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) atlases. Major ongoing efforts in my group have focused on structural imaging of the subcortex, thereby removing an important technical barrier. These efforts have paved the way for functional studies on the role of Deep Brain in decision making as described in the current proposal.
Ultra-high-field (UHF) 7Tesla (T) MRI and one of the three world-wide available Connectom MRI will be used to investigate decision mechanisms in Deep Brain networks. Three projects are proposed using a strong theory-driven and statistically high-powered model-based approach to combine beyond the-state-of-the-art techniques ranging from cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology, to quantitative modeling.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
1012WX Amsterdam
Netherlands