VandeVord, P. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2024

Effect of quantified cranial osteopathic manipulation on wild type and transgenic rat models of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimers Disease is a chronic progressive neurodegenerative disorder that impairs the cerebral lymphatic system and compartmental fluid exchange leading to a decline in cognitive function. Due to the lack of disease modifying medications, non-pharmacological Cranial Osteopathic Manipulation (COM) is evolving as a potential minimally invasive treatment choice. In this work, the effect of quantified COM treatment, using a nanosensor glove, on 3-month-old (Yg) and 18-month-old transgenic (Tg) rat model of Alzheimers Disease were studied using the Morris Water Maze (MWM), Western Blots, and Proteomics and Transcriptomics assays. The results revealed that COM had minimal to no significant difference in the behavioral and biochemical parameters in the Yg rats, suggesting COM treatment was harmless. While COM exhibited no significant differences in Tg rat MWM escape latency, navigation to the platform was significantly different on testing days 5 and 6, with p-values of signed initial heading error were 0.014 and 0.034 respectively. This indicates a difference in learning and spatial working memory. A proteomic assay on Tg rat hippocampus identified 51 significantly differentially expressed proteins with 34 associated with neurological disorders, while transcriptome remained indifferent. In this study, for the first time we have established a technique to quantify the force applied during COM treatment on an animal model of AD, offering a more objective approach for evaluating the effect of such treatments. Our results indicate that a quantifiable COM can be applied to rodents and to study the resulting behavioral and biochemical phenotypes.

bioengineering↗

bioRxiv2020

MRI Brain Templates of the Male Yucatan Minipig

The pig is growing in popularity as an experimental animal because its gyrencephalic brain is similar to humans. Currently, however, there is a lack of appropriate brain templates to support functional and structural neuroimaging pipelines. The primary contribution of this work is an average volume from an iterative, non-linear registration of 70 male Yucatan minipig subjects whose ages ranged from five to seven months. In addition, several aspects of this study are unique, including the comparison of linear and non-linear template generation, the characterization of a large and homogeneous cohort, an analysis of effective resolution after averaging, and the evaluation of potential within template bias as well as a comparison with a template from another minipig species using a "left-out" validation set. We found that within our highly homogeneous co-hort, non-linear registration produced better templates, but only marginally so. Although our T1-weighted data were resolution limited, we preserved effective resolution across the multi-subject average, produced templates that have high gray-white matter contrast, and demonstrated superior registration accuracy compared to the only known alternative minipig template.

neuroscience↗