title: Functional connectivity fMRI of the rodent brain: comparison of functional connectivity networks in rat and mouse.
abstract: At present, resting state functional MRI (rsfMRI) is increasingly used in human neuropathological research. The present study aims at implementing rsfMRI in mice, a species that holds the widest variety of neurological disease models. Moreover, by acquiring rsfMRI data with a comparable protocol for anesthesia, scanning and analysis, in both rats and mice we were able to compare findings obtained in both species. The outcome of rsfMRI is different for rats and mice and depends strongly on the applied number of components in the Independent Component Analysis (ICA). The most important difference was the appearance of unilateral cortical components for the mouse resting state data compared to bilateral rat cortical networks. Furthermore, a higher number of components was needed for the ICA analysis to separate different cortical regions in mice as compared to rats.
authors.affiliation: Bio-Imaging Lab, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. elisabeth.jonckers@ua.ac.be
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Jonckers
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Van Audekerke
authors.forename: Geofrey
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: De Visscher
authors.forename: Annemie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Van der Linden
authors.forename: Marleen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Verhoye
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D051381:Rats; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013045:Species Specificity