Combining brain perturbation and neuroimaging in non-human primates

Chemogenetic sensory fMRI reveals behaviorally relevant bidirectional changes in primate somatosensory network

“…The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been widely used to examine brain-wide network operation underlying a variety of cognitive, affective, and motor functions in non-human primates, providing opportunities for a profound understanding of the corresponding functions in humans in health and disease (Vanduffel et al, 2014). Combining neuromodulation including electrical stimulation or muscimol injection with the monkey fMRI has shown to be a powerful approach for causally linking neural activity to behavior or testing neural coupling across brain regions (Bogadhi et al, 2019;Ekstrom et al, 2008;Klink et al, 2021;Miyamoto et al, 2017;Moeller et al, 2008;Rocchi et al, 2021;Schmid et al, 2010;Tolias et al, 2005;Van Dromme et al, 2016;Verhagen et al, 2019;Wilke et al, 2012;Xu et al, 2019;Yang et al, 2018). Compared with conventional neuromodulation approaches, genetic intervention has certain advantages, including anatomical and/or cell-type specificity of the manipulation target, which has been applied to non-human primates to change behavior and/or local neuronal activity at the manipulated region (Deffains et al, 2021;El-Shamayleh and Horwitz, 2019;Eldridge et al, 2016;Nagai et al, 2016;Raper et al, 2019;Upright et al, 2018).…”

Brain Structure and Function: the first 15 years—a retrospective

“…It is important to apply molecular markers that can be combined with patterned physiology (e.g., Cerminara et al 2015); we need to include vasculature (e.g., Ji et al 2021) and the role of glia. Neuroimaging in non-human primates needs to be combined with perturbations (Klink et al 2021). Finally, we need to incorporate best practices from various research projects, and most of all to re-evaluate old morphological concepts, such as cortical columns, and other spatially periodic pattern of axons, cells, receptors that have gotten us almost nowhere and consider developing new views.…”

Fusion of quantitative susceptibility maps and T1-weighted images improve brain tissue contrast in primates

“…Further immunohistochemistry studies in NHPs might provide a better understanding of the neural substrates and molecular physiological mechanisms of the iron content and could enable means for quantifying the degree of iron contribution to the QSM map of the brain. Moreover, exploring cortical and subcortical structures by neuroimaging and interventional studies in NHPs (Klink et al, 2021) may improve our understanding of the cortico-striatal-thalamic circuits and may guide therapeutic interventions. For example, the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a typical target for deep brain stimulation (DBS) studies; its accurate delineation might aid in the physiological characterization of neuronal responses and microstimulation parameters, as has been shown in human patients undergoing DBS treatment (Liu et al, 2015).…”