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AUTOMATIC LOCALIZATION OF BRAINSTEM NUCLEI IN A LARGE POPULATION SAMPLE AND ROLE IN HEALTH AND DISEASE
Veronica Mäki-Marttunenand 2 co-authors
Oslo University Hospital
FENS Forum 2026 (2026)
Barcelona, Spain
Board PS06-09PM-361
Presentation
Date TBA
Board: PS06-09PM-361
Event Information
Poster Board
PS06-09PM-361
Poster
View posterAbstract
The brainstem, the evolutionarily oldest portion of the human brain, contains > 100 small regions that cover a large range of functions. Many of these small regions are involved in a variety of disorders and are particularly susceptible to damage in the pre-symptomatic phase of various neurodegenerative diseases. Despite the importance of the brainstem anatomy and physiology, its subregions have often been overlooked in mainstream neuroimaging due to its small size and intricate anatomical configuration. New developments on brainstem imaging have the potential to identify disease biomarkers and pinpoint mechanistic insights into many neurological and psychiatric disorders, however the use of small samples in MRI studies of specific nuclei hinder the ability to generalize the findings to the population. Here we aimed to identify and characterize multiple brainstem nuclei covering a variety of functions in a large population database, the UK-Biobank (N ~59,000). Our main aim was to characterize structural aspects of brainstem nuclei in common brain disorders, and correlate with lifestyle and health-related variables. The nuclei segmented were subthalamic nucleus, locus coeruleus, substantia nigra, dorsal raphe, periaqueductal grey and red nucleus. After validating the segmentations, we obtained measures of volume and microstructure. Our findings indicate that brainstem nuclei can be successfully segmented using a deep-learning segmentation algorithm, and that the structural features present different patterns across different common brain disorders. Our results fill the gaps in our knowledge with respect to key brainstem structures and motivate future studies assessing their interaction with other brain circuits in health and pathology.
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