Controlling for age, we found that between group effects for subcortical gray matter structures were significant for the thalamus (F = 3.06, p = .04), caudate nucleus (F = 3.19, p = .03), and putamen (F = 4.82, p = .005).005
No other significant neural differences were observed between groups, such as for the subcortical enhancement of the F0 or other harmonics.
To compare global parenchyma volumes between groups, and to determine intracranial volume (ICV) for normalisation of subcortical volumes, each image was brain extracted using FSL's brain extraction tool [Smith, 2002] and segmented into gray matter, white matter and CSF compartments using FSL's Automatic Segmentation Tool (FAST) [Zhang et al., 2001].
We observed small between-group differences in the rates of rise and decline of HDRs that were more apparent in individuals with cortical as compared to subcortical stroke.
Finally, we assessed subcortical gray matter differences between groups, focusing on the hippocampus, amygdala, caudate nucleus, putamen, and thalamus.
Following subcortical segmentation, we compared the volumes of these regions between groups using ANOVA and pairwise comparisons, and we performed correlation analyses to examine relationships with peak ventral striatal activity (as for the above correlation).
For subcortical regions this number is between 16 and 76 subjects, depending on the region.
This indicates that differences between groups in MEP facilitation during action observation are not due to differences in the extent of subcortical damage to the corticospinal pathway.
The cerebrum also contains groups of subcortical neuronal masses known as basal ganglia.
Groups analyses were performed through the QDec software for cortical volumes (level of significance fixed at p 0.01) and through the SPSS V22.0 software for subcortical volumes (level of significance fixed at p 0.05).
