Granularity of white matter microstructure in the brain: its role in brain function and motor behavior

In many daily life activities such as buttoning up a blouse, tying your shoelaces or washing your hair, excellent coordination between the hands is crucial. During such movements, good collaboration (i.e., communication) within and between both sides of the brain is of great importance. This neural communication is accomplished via white matter pathways (structural connectivity) and functional interactions between relevant brain areas (functional connectivity). Largely due to technical limitations, a challenge remains to exactly identify which features of white matter microstructure, constituting neural pathways, contribute to functional interactions and behavioral outcome. By means of cutting-edge quantitative white matter and functional neuroimaging, as well as advanced brain stimulation techniques, we aim to determine the biological mechanisms promoting functional communication, and facilitating bimanual behavior. Importantly, by introducing a long-term bimanual skill-learning intervention, we will additionally investigate white matter neuroplasticity. This field is currently confronted with inconsistent and non-replicable results that require a new impetus by means of technological advancements to obtain MRI-derived quantities that are ever more representative of underlying biological processes. In other words, going beyond the current state-of-the art we will study how training can shape the brain to boost behavioral performance.