Abstract #0516

BOLD FMRI of Forepaw Stimulation at Different Amplitudes in Mice

Simone Claudia Bosshard¹, Christof Baltes¹, Thomas Mueggler¹, Markus Rudin^1,2

¹Institute for Biomedical Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; ²Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

fMRI in mice is challenging due to high demands in sensitivity. Using a cryogenic RF transceiver probe, BOLD fMRI of electrical forepaw stimulation was performed in mice under isoflurane anesthesia. The BOLD signal comprised a slow and a fast component, which may reflect different processing pathways. The two signal contributions were analyzed separately in the S1 somatosensory cortex and the thalamus and were shown to correlate well with the current amplitude of the stimulus. The segregation of the signal into two components might help to understand the underlying physiological processes.