Abstract #2011

Dhenain M, Francis F, Kappeler C, Saillour Y, Walczak C, Volk A

The passive staining protocol consists of soaking a brain in a mixture of gadoteric acid (Dotarem) and formalin. This procedure strongly reduces the relaxation times in brain samples and improves the contrast between white matter, subcortical structures and the cortex on 3D images recorded by MRI microscopy. Its application to the brain of doublecortin knockout mouse, a model of type-1 lissencephaly, revealed corpus callosum agenesis associated with modification of the hippocampal shape, as well as cingulate cortex hyper-extension and ectopic fiber bundles. This protocol can thus be useful to screen brain anomalies in transgenic mice without performing time-consuming histological studies.