Deep brain structural functionality

The deep brain is the poor cousin of the human brain. Because of its complex shape and location, it is difficult to study, and equal from structural and functional points of views. The grounds of its architecture were shown as from the early modern period, reproducing, for instance the “visible” surface of the thalamus, i.e., the pulvinar, and the striated bodies. Only recent noninvasive methods such as magnetic resonance imaging, enable its true extensive exploration, in vivo, hence useable in clinical practice. The basic functionality of the deep brain was reported during the 19^th century. Although a large amount of knowledge was further harvested, the deep brain is still a wild region, notably for connectomics and functional approaches, remote descendants of morphologic science, such as anatomy and histology, and physiology and pathophysiology in medicine. The meta structural functionality of brain, which begins to be tackled, should meet the challenge of the integration of functional and structural circuits, either cortical and deep, thanks to computational approaches, guided by human knowledge and ethics. The talk starts from historical aspects that unravel the most recent in vivo structural analysis. The functionality supported by the architecture is exemplified through clinical applications. Research topics are suggested.

Key words: deep brain, architecture, structural MRI, functional loops, thalamus, subthalamus.