Benjamin Schmitt1, Catherine Amara2, Ingo von Both3, Peter Bachert1, Andreas Schulze3,4
1Department of Medical Physics in Radiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany; 2Faculty of Physical Education and Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; 3Research Institute, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada; 4Department of Pediatrics, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada
In order to differentiate between normal and disease-related effects in studies of animal models of pathologies it is important to have background information about the phenotype of healthy animals. An animal MRS study was performed to obtain further knowledge about the biochemical maturation of the brain of C57Bl/6 mice during postnatal development. The results indicate that functional development continues after postnatal day 21 as changes in brain metabolite levels can be observed beyond this point. This work provides new findings on physiological mouse brain maturation, which can be particularly important for the investigation of metabolic diseases in young mice.