Towards topography-driven stereotactic targeting of the zona incerta

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre 

The zona incerta (ZI)–a brain structure implicated in various functions (Mitrofanis, 2005)–is a target for deep brain stimulation (DBS) in essential tremor (ET) (Plaha et al., 2011) and Parkinson's disease (Blomstedt et al., 2018). Yet, precise stereotactic ZI targeting remains challenging due to poor direct visualization. We propose a novel approach by combining (i) our previous in vivo labeling of the human ZI based on 7 Tesla MRI T1 mapping (Lau et al., 2020) and (ii) cortico-incertal structural connectivity maps derived from high-quality diffusion MRI (dMRI) datasets of the Human Connectome Project (HCP) (Van Essen et al., 2012).