Abstract #4504

MEMRI Study of Mice Cerebellar Activation After Voluntary Wheel Running

Iris Y. Zhou^1,2, April Mei Kwan Chow^1,2, Kevin C. Chan^1,2, Condon Lau^1,2, Ed X. Wu^1,2

¹Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China; ²Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China

In the present study, we use in vivo MEMRI to detect the cerebellar activation in mouse brain induced by voluntary wheel running. The preliminary result of our study shows that after voluntary wheel-running exercise, mouse cerebellum regions such as vermis, Crus I and II of ansiform lobule and caudal pontine reticular nucleus are significantly activated compared to the sedentary animals. This difference can be feasibly detected by MEMRI, suggesting the great potential of MEMRI as an in vivo probe for mapping neural activity.