Mouse Brain Elastography Changes with Sleep/wake Cycles, Aging, and Alzheimer's Disease

Overview

Journal Neuroimage

Specialty Radiology

Date 2024 Jun 1

PMID 38823503

Authors

Gary R Ge

Wei Song

Michael J Giannetto

Jannick P Rolland

Maiken Nedergaard

Kevin J Parker

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Understanding the physiological processes in aging and how neurodegenerative disorders affect cognitive function is a high priority for advancing human health. One specific area of recently enabled research is the in vivo biomechanical state of the brain. This study utilized reverberant optical coherence elastography, a high-resolution elasticity imaging method, to investigate stiffness changes during the sleep/wake cycle, aging, and Alzheimer's disease in murine models. Four-dimensional scans of 44 wildtype mice, 13 mice with deletion of aquaporin-4 water channel, and 12 mice with Alzheimer-related pathology (APP/PS1) demonstrated that (1) cortical tissue became softer (on the order of a 10% decrease in shear wave speed) when young wildtype mice transitioned from wake to anesthetized, yet this effect was lost in aging and with mice overexpressing amyloid-β or lacking the water channel AQP4. (2) Cortical stiffness increased with age in all mice lines, but wildtype mice exhibited the most prominent changes as a function of aging. The study provides novel insight into the brain's biomechanics, the constraints of fluid flow, and how the state of brain activity affects basic properties of cortical tissues.

Citing Articles

Cardiovascular and vasomotor pulsations in the brain and periphery during awake and NREM sleep in a multimodal fMRI study.

Tuunanen J, Helakari H, Huotari N, Vayrynen T, Jarvela M, Kananen J Front Neurosci. 2024; 18:1457732.

PMID: 39440186 PMC: 11493778. DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1457732.

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