Meeting Banner
Abstract #3594

Fractional Anisotropy Correlates with Social Behavior Symptoms in a Mouse Model Relevant to Autism

Sungheon Kim1, Steve Pickup2, Andrew H. Fairless3, Ranjit Ittyerah2, Holly C. Dow3, Ted Abel4, Edward S. Brodkin3, Harish Poptani2

1Department of Radiology, New York University, New York, NY, USA; 2Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 3Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 4Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA


The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in detecting abnormal brain regions associated with reduced sociability in juvenile BALB/cJ mice. Sociability was measured in terms of the time a 31-day-old BALB/cJ test mouse spent sniffing a stimulus mouse. Ex vivo DTI data on fifteen BALB/cJ mouse brains were acquired and were co-registered to a template brain generated from four C57BL/6J mouse brains. Using regression analysis, positive relationships between the sociability and fractional anisotropy were found in the white matter regions, whereas negative relationships were found in the gray matter regions.

Keywords