Direct comparison of activation maps during galvanic vestibular stimulation: A hybrid H2[15 O] PET-BOLD MRI activation study

PLoS One. 2020 May 15;15(5):e0233262. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233262. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Previous unimodal PET and fMRI studies in humans revealed a reproducible vestibular brain activation pattern, but with variations in its weighting and expansiveness. Hybrid studies minimizing methodological variations at baseline conditions are rare and still lacking for task-based designs. Thus, we applied for the first time hybrid 3T PET-MRI scanning (Siemens mMR) in healthy volunteers using galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) in healthy volunteers in order to directly compare H215O-PET and BOLD MRI responses. List mode PET acquisition started with the injection of 750 MBq H215O simultaneously to MRI EPI sequences. Group-level statistical parametric maps were generated for GVS vs. rest contrasts of PET, MR-onset (event-related), and MR-block. All contrasts showed a similar bilateral vestibular activation pattern with remarkable proximity of activation foci. Both BOLD contrasts gave more bilateral wide-spread activation clusters than PET; no area showed contradictory signal responses. PET still confirmed the right-hemispheric lateralization of the vestibular system, whereas BOLD-onset revealed only a tendency. The reciprocal inhibitory visual-vestibular interaction concept was confirmed by PET signal decreases in primary and secondary visual cortices, and BOLD-block decreases in secondary visual areas. In conclusion, MRI activation maps contained a mixture of CBF measured using H215O-PET and additional non-CBF effects, and the activation-deactivation pattern of the BOLD-block appears to be more similar to the H215O-PET than the BOLD-onset.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Brain / diagnostic imaging*
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Brain Mapping
  • Cerebrovascular Circulation
  • Electric Stimulation
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging*
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Multimodal Imaging*
  • Oxygen / blood
  • Perception / physiology
  • Positron-Emission Tomography*
  • Vestibule, Labyrinth / physiology*

Substances

  • Oxygen

Grants and funding

The study is not industry-sponsored. The study is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant code 01 EO 0901 and 01 EO 1401, M. Dieterich, P. Bartenstein, S. Becker-Bense; https://www.bmbf.de/en/index.html), and the Deutsche Stiftung Neurologie (DSN; M. Dieterich; http://www.deutsche-stiftung-neurologie.de/), and the German Research Foundation Excellence strategy (EXC 2145SyNergy - ID 390857198). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.