Mapping Dorsal and Ventral Caudate in Older Adults: Method and Validation

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Neuroimaging

Background:

• The caudate nucleus is crucial for cognition and affect, with distinct dorsal and ventral regions.
• Dorsal caudate is linked to executive functions, while ventral caudate is involved in affective processing.
• Accurate caudate parcellation is vital for understanding brain disorders, but its application in older adults is underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effectiveness of resting-state fMRI and clustering for parcellating the caudate nucleus in older adults.
• To validate the functional significance of identified dorsal and ventral caudate subregions in relation to cognitive and affective measures.

Main Methods:

• Acquired resting-state fMRI data from 56 non-demented older adults.
• Computed voxel-wise functional connectivity within the caudate nucleus.
• Applied K-means clustering (K=2) to connectivity patterns to delineate subregions.

Main Results:

• K-means clustering successfully identified two distinct caudate subregions consistent with dorsal and ventral divisions.
• Dorsal caudate connectivity correlated significantly with working memory and fluid reasoning.
• Ventral caudate connectivity showed stronger associations with pain and fatigue severity.

Conclusions:

• Resting-state fMRI combined with clustering reliably parcellates the caudate nucleus into dorsal and ventral subregions in older adults.
• This method validates the distinct functional roles of dorsal (cognitive) and ventral (affective) caudate in aging.
• The findings support the clinical and basic neuroscience significance of precise caudate nucleus segmentation in older populations.