A multimodal approach to trace motor cortical-peripheral pathways based on mixed Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Diffusion Tensor Imaging technique

This paper shows how to exactly define the pathways involved in motor activities through the connection of data from Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) technique computed by using a 3-Tesla Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) system. The pathways are identified by means of deterministic tractography applied to DTI images acquired with opportune diffusion sequences. By considering the same anatomical MRI with T1-sequence, those DTI images are superimposed to the ones obtained by TMS applied to the cortical areas involved in the motor tasks. Our results indicate that by the superimposing of fiber bundles it is possible to achieve an analysis of anatomical structures not based on brain atlas obtained by normalization, as usually done from medical stuff. The advantage is an analysis with no subjective parameters.