Macroscopic Structural and Connectome Mapping of the Mouse Brain Using Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Translational work in rodents elucidates basic mechanisms that drive complex behaviors relevant to psychiatric and neurological conditions. Nonetheless, numerous promising studies in rodents later fail in clinical trials, highlighting the need for improving the translational utility of preclinical studies in rodents. Imaging of small rodents provides an important strategy to address this challenge, as it enables a whole-brain unbiased search for structural and dynamic changes that can be directly compared to human imaging. The functional significance of structural changes identified using imaging can then be further investigated using molecular and genetic tools available for the mouse. Here, we describe a pipeline for unbiased search and characterization of structural changes and network properties, based on diffusion MRI data covering the entire mouse brain at an isotropic resolution of 100 µm. We first used unbiased whole-brain voxel-based analyses to identify volumetric and microstructural alterations in the brain of adult mice exposed to unpredictable postnatal stress (UPS), which is a mouse model of complex early life stress (ELS). Brain regions showing structural abnormalities were used as nodes to generate a grid for assessing structural connectivity and network properties based on graph theory. The technique described here can be broadly applied to understand brain connectivity in other mouse models of human disorders, as well as in genetically modified mouse strains.

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Work Title Macroscopic Structural and Connectome Mapping of the Mouse Brain Using Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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Open Access
Creators
  1. Tanzil Arefin
  2. Choong Lee
  3. Jordon White
  4. Jiangynag Zhang
  5. Arie Kaffman
License CC BY 4.0 (Attribution)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Bio-protocol
Publication Date November 20, 2021
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.21769/BioProtoc.4221
Deposited January 25, 2025

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Version 1
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  • Created
  • Added 2021_Arefin_et_al-1.pdf
  • Added Creator Tanzil Arefin
  • Added Creator Choong Lee
  • Added Creator Jordon White
  • Added Creator Jiangynag Zhang
  • Added Creator Arie Kaffman
  • Published
  • Updated