Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-9-2024
Keywords
cerebellum; depression; diffusion imaging; dopamine; reward; ventral tegmental area
Abstract
Emerging research in nonhuman animals implicates cerebellar projections to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in appetitive behaviors, but these circuits have not been characterized in humans. Here, we mapped cerebello-VTA white matter connectivity in a cohort of men and women using probabilistic tractography on diffusion imaging data from the Human Connectome Project. We uncovered the topographical organization of these connections by separately tracking from parcels of cerebellar lobule VI, crus I/II, vermis, paravermis, and cerebrocerebellum. Results revealed that connections between the cerebellum and VTA predominantly originate in the right cerebellar hemisphere, interposed nucleus, and paravermal cortex and terminate mostly ipsilaterally. Paravermal crus I sends the most connections to the VTA compared with other lobules. We discovered a mediolateral gradient of connectivity, such that the medial cerebellum has the highest connectivity with the VTA. Individual differences in microstructure were associated with measures of negative affect and social functioning. By splitting the tracts into quarters, we found that the socioaffective effects were driven by the third quarter of the tract, corresponding to the point at which the fibers leave the deep nuclei. Taken together, we produced detailed maps of cerebello-VTA structural connectivity for the first time in humans and established their relevance for trait differences in socioaffective regulation.
Citation
Linda J. Hoffman, Julia M. Foley, Josiah K. Leong, Holly Sullivan-Toole, Blake L. Elliott, Ingrid R. Olson. A Virtual In Vivo Dissection and Analysis of Socioaffective Symptoms Related to Cerebellum-Midbrain Reward Circuitry in Humans. Journal of Neuroscience 9 October 2024, 44 (41) e1031242024; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1031-24.2024
Visualization for a representative polysynaptic tractography
F2.ppt (295 kB)
Tractography results showing connections between the cerebellar cortex in a representative subject, deep cerebellar nuclei, and VTA overlaid on the FA image
F3.ppt (390 kB)
Illustrations of the main effect and interaction effect statistics
F4.ppt (329 kB)
A summary of statistical results investigating gross pairwise comparisons.
F5.ppt (248 kB)
Topographical organization of cerebellum-VTA connectivity overlaid on FA image
F6.ppt (358 kB)
Summary of correlations between subscales on the ASR and FA averaged across all 100 nodes of the right-to-right traveling polysynaptic tracts of highest streamline density.
F7.ppt (373 kB)
The results between monosynaptic tractography FA for each deep cerebellar nucleus traveling right-to-right and ASR measures.
inline-supplementary-material-1.docx (15 kB)
Table 3.1 Success rate for each tractography by number of non-zero reconstructions
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Table 3.2 Main effects controlling for length
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Table 3.3. Main effects controlling for waypoint volume.
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Table 5,1 Descriptive statistics fTable 4.1. Interactions controlling for length.
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Table 4.2. Interactions controlling for waypoint volume.
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Table 5,1 Descriptive statistics for self-report measures under study.
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Table 6-1
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Table 7-1
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Table 8-1
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
