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Water and neurons… MRI diffusion, brain mapping and brief psychiatric perspectives Volume 86, issue 6, juin-juillet 2010

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Authors
Service de psychiatrie générale, Département de psychiatrie CHUV, Clinique de Cery, 1008 Prilly, Switzerland, Centre de neurosciences psychiatriques, Département de psychiatrie CHUV, Clinique de Cery, 1008 Prilly, Switzerland, Département de radiologie CHUV, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland

Water diffusion anisotropy in brain tissue represents the physical basis of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as well as tractography. The sensitivity of water molecules to the underlying microstructure is a unique property which opens the prospect of visualising nerve fibres and their integrity. The scope of this review is to describe the physics underlying diffusion MRI as well as acquisition methods and analysis which are essential to a better understanding of the strength and limitation of this technique in current research. We will then discuss recent advances and the change in paradigm currently operating in this field with the advent of connectomics which, step by step, has paved the way towards a new framework to apprehend the complexity of the human brain. Numerous studies have applied diffusion MRI to the field of psychiatry, including schizophrenia and affective disorder, presented in this article as illustrative examples. The interface between these techniques and the field of psychiatry remains without doubt a worthwhile task.