Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients show a variety of symptoms, including mood, cognitive, respiratory, and profuse sweating issues. These abnormal symptoms suggest the presence of brain injury in this condition, which can be examined with non-invasive magnet...

The white matter of the brain is crucial for maintaining cognitive function, and damage to the white matter has been associated with aging, cognitive decline and the progression of dementia. Clinically, white matter damage is detected using Magnetic Res...

The existence of sex differences in the brain have become impossible to ignore. Research in non-human animals provides an opportunity to study the biology of sex differences in isolation from the roles that culture and society play in shaping the brain ...

Women APOE-ε4 carriers are susceptible to accelerated aging and undergo faster rates of conversion from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (Lin et al, Alzheimer’s & dementia, 2015). Using humanized APOE-ε4 gene knock-in rat mode...

Prion diseases are a group of invariably fatal neurodegenerative diseases associated with the conformational transformation of prion protein PrPC (C-cellular) into a toxic and infectious conformer PrPSc (Sc-scrapie). PrPSc accumulates in organs which express PrPC, using PrPC as a template for its own replication. Carriers of prion infections harbor PrPSc in the lymphatic organs for months and years before the disease involves their brains and first neurological symptoms occur. Asymptomatic carriers constitute a reservoir for further spread of infection to other humans through organ transplantation and blood transfusion. Currently, no test which identifies asymptomatic carries of prion infection exists. Therefore, we have developed a novel MRI approach to visualize the presence of PrPSc in lymphatic organs. Several synthetic, non-toxic peptides that have high binding affinity to PrPSc were developed using a pepscan approach. PrP145-174 which had the highest binding affinity was synthesized with DTPA on its ...

Ischemic brain injury develops from a complex sequence of pathological events that evolve over time. Authors tried to assess the changes and progress of ischemia in photothrombotic ischemia model using MRI and histological analysis and to provide the information regarding the timing and effect of therapeutic intervention researches. Photothrombotic ischemia was induced in the motor cortex of Sprague-Dawley male rat using Rose Bengal dye (20mg/kg) and cold light. MRIs including T1-weighted(T1W), T2- weighted (T2W), Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), were obtained using 1.5T MRI and 47mm surface coil at 1, 6, 12, 24 hours, 3, 7, 14, 21. 28, 42, and 56 days. After MRI, rats were sacrificed, and the brain sections were stained with H & E, Nissl, Synaptophysin, and Neurofilament. Infarction volume and contrast-noncontrast ratio (CNR) were measured in all images. Infarction volume was measured the greatest (109mm©ø) on day 1, decreased progressively and reached 8.9mm©ø in 8 weeks. CNR was greatest on 12 hours in ...

The high prevalence of age-associated verbal learning decrements underscores the importance of understanding their structural brain correlates. Numerous reports have revealed associations between age-related memory impairments and concomitant decrements...

1. Introduction. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive method that modulates neural activity in the brain. Recently, researchers have attempted to precisely estimate the stimulus-induced electric field by using an anatomically realist...

Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 10 (SCA10) is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by the expansion of an ATTCT pentanucleotide repeat. Its clinical features include ataxia and, in some cases, epileptic seizures. To date, little is known about SCA10 cognitiv...

Mouse models provide useful tools to examine the genetic basis of disease. The Tennessee Mouse Genome Consortium screen for clinically relevant mouse models identified one mutant (178TNC) with reduced brain weight that was 3-5 standard deviations below the mean. We sought to validate this preliminary result and precisely quantify differences in brain size between mutant and wild-type animals using anatomical MRI scans with volumetric analysis. Freshly fixed age-matched mouse heads were secured within a custom-built T/R TEM RF coil using a locking mouth bar unit, ensuring reproducible head orientation and stabilization. Images were acquired using a proton density-weighted spin echo pulse sequence (TR=5000, TE=8.6, bandwidth=30K, voxel size=100x100x350 microns) on a Magnex 7 Tesla MRI scanner driven by a Varian console running VNMRJ. “Whole brain” regions for analysis were traced in coded data sets using XVOXTRACE. These regions included the olfactory bulbs and cerebellum and were demarcated at the level of ...