FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY AND COACTIVATION OF THE NUCLEUS ACCUMBENS: A COMBINED FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY AND STRUCTURE-BASED META-ANALYSIS CAUDA F 12, CAVANNA AE 4, D’AGATA F 123, SACCO K 12, DUCA S 1, GEMINIANI G 12 1 CCS fMRI, Koelliker Hospital, Turin, Italy 2 Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy 3 Department of Neuroscience, AOU San Giovanni Battista, Turin, Italy 4 Institute of Neurology, UCL, London, UK

BACKGROUND Nacc with olfactory tubercle forms ventral striatum. It is located between the head of caudate and the anterior portion of the putamen, laterally to semptum pellucidum Cortical projection: OMPFC (ACC, OFC, MPFC) Subcortical projection: thalamus, hipp., b. amygdaloid complex, VTA, raphe, NST. It is a pivotal centre regulating motivation and reward, integrating limbic and cortical input. It is a link between reward experiences, emotion and motivation.

AIM OF THE STUDY The studies on striatum connectivity in vivo in human are few and none focused on Nucleus Accumbens. We used resting state Functional Connectivity rsFC and Meta-Analytical Connectivity Modelling MACM to study Nacc connectivity. rsFC detects coherent patterns of spontaneous activity in the resting brain. It has been demonstrated that correlations in slowly fluctuating spontaneous BOLD signal tend to reflect intrinsic functional networking. MACM address global coactivation patterns across a diverse range of experimental activation tasks. The consistency of coactivation patterns across experiments again reflect intrinsic functional networking. We would compare two complementary techniques: one based on a activation and the other on resting, to characterize similarities and differences.

METHODS rsFC ROIs from AFNI atlas MACM ROIs from two boxes around TDD coordinates rsFC 18 healthy control (9 F, 51±19 y) 1.5 T INTERA, 200 Volumes EPI (TR 2000, TE 50, FA 90°, 19 slices 4.5 mm, 64x64) Slice scan time, 3D motion correction, smoothing 8 mm FWHM, temporal filtering, pass band Hz, coregistered 3D high resolution T1, Talairach normalized Nuisance: WM, GS, CSF, 6 motion. Map FDR q<0.05, RFX with age and gender MACM 42 papers from BrainMap database (57 experiments, 762 foci) Activation Likehood Extimation (RFX) FDR q<0.05

rsFC

MACM

PARADIGM CLASS PROFILE

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS rsFC MACM

QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

LATERALIZATION RIGHT LEFT

PARADIGM CLASS LATERALIZATION

REWARD CONNECTIONS SCHEMA

PRINCIPAL NEURON SYSTEMS A review of systems and networks of the limbicforebrain/limbic midbrain Peter J. Morgane, Janina R. Galler, David J. Mokler Progress in Neurobiology 75 (2005) 143–160

CONCLUSIONS Our resting-state connectivity findings provide confirmation to the role of the NAcc as a seat for major ‘hedonic hotspots’ in the widespread pleasure-activated brain networks in humans. Such hedonic hotspots are anatomically distributed: NAcc, other forebrain and limbic cortical regions, and deep brainstem regions. From a clinical perspective, the identification of this network is essential to the understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying reward experiences and neuropsychiatric conditions such as addiction, impulse control disorders and obsessive compulsive spectrum disorders. Therefore, our results stress the importance of studying functional connectivity in addition to standard fMRI analysis in reward-related studies in a wide range of neuropsychiatric conditions.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION A SPECIAL THANK TO: DR FRANCO CAUDA, DR ANDREA CAVANNA, DR KATIUSCIA SACCO, DR SERGIO DUCA and PROF GEMINIANI