ETD

Archivio digitale delle tesi discusse presso l'Università di Pisa

Tesi etd-08192021-193539


Tipo di tesi
Tesi di laurea magistrale
Autore
SCARLATTI, FRANCESCO
URN
etd-08192021-193539
Titolo
Short-term monocular deprivation in adult humans alters functional brain connectivity measured with ultra-high field Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Dipartimento
BIOLOGIA
Corso di studi
NEUROSCIENCE
Relatori
relatore Prof.ssa Binda, Paola
Parole chiave
  • monocular
  • deprivation
  • functional
  • connectivity
  • adult
  • humans
  • ocular
  • dominance
  • critical
  • period
  • homeostatic
  • plasticity
  • visual
  • system
  • ventral
  • stream
  • parvocellular
  • pulvinar
  • fMRI
Data inizio appello
21/09/2021
Consultabilità
Non consultabile
Data di rilascio
21/09/2091
Riassunto
I analysed surface- and volume-based ultra-high field 7T fMRI data collected before and after short-term (2 hr) monocular deprivation. During the acquisitions subjects were monocularly stimulated, one eye at a time. Here I asked whether monocular deprivation produces a reorganization of cortical and/or subcortical circuits of visual processing. To address this question, I extracted the variability in fMRI timeseries that was unrelated to the visual stimulation (defined as the residuals of the best-fitting general linear model, pooled across deprived and non-deprived eyes) and correlated timeseries in primary visual cortex V1 to several cortical areas and subcortical areas. The results show that, after deprivation, the functional connectivity increased between primary visual cortex (V1) and a set of cortical regions primarily distributed along the ventral stream of visual processing but also including portions of the motor and somatosensory cortices. The functional connectivity between V1 and its main thalamic input, the lateral geniculate nucleus LGN, was unaffected. In contrast, a selective increase in functional connectivity was observed for the adjacent region of the ventral pulvinar.
Overall, these results suggest that the effects of short-term monocular deprivation involve a transient reorganization of cortical circuits, including both local circuits and long-range projections.
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