Glatigny, M. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2024

A 3D-printed cradle for mouse preclinical MRI with an integrated water heating system

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of small animals is mainly performed under sedation or anesthesia to avoid movement, which is detrimental to image quality. Heating systems to warm the animals usually rely on airflow or heating blankets or pads with circulating water to comply with MR compatibility requirements. However, these solutions are often suboptimal for small animals like mice scanned at ultra-high magnetic fields with long-bore MR scanners. We designed and built an MR cradle with an integrated water chamber, maximizing the contact surface with the mouses body. This large contact surface helps maintain body temperature without overheating the animal, thus reducing the risk of burns and hyperthermia. Our cradle keeps the mouses body temperature stable within the physiological range during an MRI session and fits the bore of a Bruker 17.2T scanner. We share the 3D drawings and all the information needed to replicate the cradle. Our design can be adapted to work on preclinical scanners with similar bore sizes and customized to add stimulation devices.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Comparison of the cortical hierarchy between macaque monkeys and mice based on cell-type specific microcircuits

The primate neocortex contains a hierarchy of cortical areas, with feedforward connections running from lower to higher levels, and feedback connections running in the opposite direction. The relative hierarchical position of cortical areas has been well established by retrograde tracing studies that allow to determine whether type of output from different source areas is predominantly feedforward or feedback. This method can not determine whether the cortico-cortical input within target areas is predominantly feedforward or feedback. We here make use of cell-type specific microcircuits to provide an intrinsic measure of the strength of feedforward versus feedback processing within cortical areas in macaque monkeys and mice. This allows a more complete map of the cortical hierarchy of different species, and therefore a more direct cross-species comparison. Parvalbumin-expressing interneurons were used as a marker of feedforward processing and calretinin-expressing interneurons as a marker of feedback processing. We found steep gradients in the distributions of these two interneuron types across macaque monkey cortical areas, indicating a deep cortical hierarchy where early visual areas are dominated by feedforward neural circuits and higher cortical areas become dominated by top-recurrent circuits. In contrast, the gradient in interneuron distribution across mouse cortical areas was limited, indicating a shallow cortical hierarchy and remaining dominated by feedforward neural circuits. This implies that the mouse cortex is comparable to early visual areas in primates, remaining dominated by bottom-up input. While primates are unique in having a deep cortical hierarchy that allows neural processing in higher cortical areas to become predominantly internal. Significance statementThe cortex in primates is known to contain a hierarchy of cortical areas, where bottom-up processing allows sensory information to get more and more compressed towards higher cortical areas, and where top-down processing allows lower areas to remain informed about the internal goals of the animal. However, it has been challenging to directly compare cortical hierarchies between animal species. Here, we developed an intrinsic measure of the strength of bottom-up and top-down processing within cortical areas, based on the density of different types of interneurons within areas. Or results indicate that the mouse cortical hierarchy is shallow and is driven by bottom-up processing, while the primate cortical hierarchy is deep and slowly becomes dominated by internal processing towards the top.

neuroscience↗