The brainstem reticular formation, which is notoriously complex, has finally been completely mapped
What is interesting about this study is how they deciphered the connections.
Their 7-tesla MRI map starts out like this:
and then they split the bottom picture into its principal components which end up looking like this:
The organization turns out to be surprisingly simple, it just "looks" complicated because the connections are all tangled together
This next diagram is a little hard to see, but basically it tells us there are only 2 main sets of circuits: an arousal circuit and a motor circuit. The arousal circuit only has 4 main areas of termination in the forebrain: the orbital frontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, and thalamus. The motor circuit (as expected) connects with the striatum and the motor cortex. There are other pathways (like locus coeruleus and raphe to hippocampus) but these are the main ones.
Before we can manipulate it we need to find the genetic markers that code for the endpoints. But this is a huge piece of the puzzle, it affects everything from Parkinson's to schizophrenia to sleep disorders and addiction behavior.
What is interesting about this study is how they deciphered the connections.
Their 7-tesla MRI map starts out like this:
and then they split the bottom picture into its principal components which end up looking like this:
The organization turns out to be surprisingly simple, it just "looks" complicated because the connections are all tangled together
This next diagram is a little hard to see, but basically it tells us there are only 2 main sets of circuits: an arousal circuit and a motor circuit. The arousal circuit only has 4 main areas of termination in the forebrain: the orbital frontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, and thalamus. The motor circuit (as expected) connects with the striatum and the motor cortex. There are other pathways (like locus coeruleus and raphe to hippocampus) but these are the main ones.
Before we can manipulate it we need to find the genetic markers that code for the endpoints. But this is a huge piece of the puzzle, it affects everything from Parkinson's to schizophrenia to sleep disorders and addiction behavior.
