Towards an integrated analysis of anatomical and functional connectivity

Neuroanatomy places critical constraints on the functional connectivity of the cerebral cortex. Unfortunately, microstructural borders, the individual cytoarchitecture and the distribution of neuroreceptors cannot be visualized in a living brain used for functional studies. However, brain function also strongly depends upon anatomical connectivity, and understanding brain function in terms of connectional architecture is therefore a major goal of neuroimaging. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) imaging offers the opportunity to explore the brains connectional architecture in the individual living subject and tractographic methods provide excellent means to extract connectivity information from these data sets.