Bridging Brain Structure and Function by Correlating Structural Connectivity, Cortico-Cortical Transmission and Direct Electro-Stimulation

Elucidating the structure-function relationship of the brain is one of the main open questions in neuroscience. The capabilities of diffusion MRI-based (dMRI) techniques to quantify the connectivity strength between brain areas, namely structural connectivity (SC), in combination with modalities such as electroencephalography (EEG) to quantify brain function have enabled advances in this field. However, so far the actual relationship between SC measures and measures of information transport between neuronal patches has not been determined. In this project, we aim to establish a relationship between dMRI SC measures, direct measures of electrical properties of the human brain cortex obtained with electrocorticography (ECoG), and response elicited by direct electrostimulation of the brain (DES). Ten patients operated on awake surgery for brain tumor removal will be included. First, a dMRI will be acquired prior to the surgery, in order to extract SC indices through probabilistic tractography. Then, intrasurgical cortico-cortical electrical measures will be obtained by ECoG electrodes positioned on the predefined cortical terminations of the designated bundles. These measures will be correlated to functional responses obtained during the cortical cartography, following the common DES procedure. The results of this multi-modal approach combining structure and function explorations of the brain should help to elucidate the relationship between non-invasive (dMRI) SC measures and cortico-cortical transmission properties (delays, transfer functions), and should boost the understanding of cognitive function as well as neurosurgical planning for the treatment of pathologies such as brain tumor resection and drug-resistant epilepsy.