Effect of Four Commonly Used Anesthetics on Stimulation-Induced and Resting State fMRI Signal in Mice

Aileen Schrter¹, Felix Schlegel¹, Aline Seuwen¹, Joanes Grandjean¹, Markus Rudin¹, ²

Functional MR imaging, originally applied in human studies, has been translated back to small animals, which allows performing basic research on animal models of different pathologies. In view of the many transgenic mouse lines the method has been started to be transferred from rats to mice. FMRI in small animals suffers from largely unknown influences of anesthesia, which has been addressed already in studies on rats. However, given species differences, results obtained in rat studies cannot be translated directly to mice. The presented study is characterizing the effects of four anesthetics isoflurane, urethane, medetomidine, propofol on fMRI responses in mice.