| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,300,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥2,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000)
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| Research Abstract |
We established a psychophysically appropriate visual stimuli for the parallel visual pathways using VSG THREE (Cambridge Research System). We also collected the equipments for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Then, we used fMRI to examine the regional cerebral activation under the appropriate visual stimulation in normal subjects. In order to investigate the magnocellular visual function, rotating radial grating was used as a visual stimuli. In all subjects, there was a significant activation in the MT area. After viewing continuous motion in one direction, a stationary stimulus appears to move in the opposite direction (motion aftereffect). Although a significant activation was seen in half of the subjects, the results of fMRI were variable. We need further study using more subjects. Recently, neuronal functional connectivity become more important than functional localization, therefore, we have established the way to search it using fMRI. We investigated the regional cerebral activation in normal subjects, performing five different frequencies of sequential left finger movements. Especially, we focused on the activation of the basal ganglia-thalamo-motor loop, and compared the activation pattern of self-paced and external-paced tasks. In the basal ganglia, only the right posterior putamen was constantly activated. Signal intensity of the right posterior putamen increased with increasing frequency of movements during self-paced finger movements. For further analysis, we carried out a network analysis by using the path equation model. Path coefficients showed the moderate correlation in the basal ganglia-thalamo-motor loop during self-paced finger movements, but there was no such correlation in the external-paced paradigm. A different activation of basal ganglia-thalamo-motor loop was found between the self-paced and external-paced finger movements. It is necessary to investigate the neural connectivity in the optical areas using such methods.
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