Functional Connectivity of the Mouse Brain Is Influenced by State of Consciousness: A Comparison of Awake and Differentially Anesthetized Mouse rsfMRI Protocols.

Elisabeth Jonckers¹, Rafael Delgado y Palacios¹, Disha Shah¹, Caroline Guglielmetti¹, Marleen Verhoye¹, Annemie Van der Linden¹

The use of resting state functional MRI (rsfMRI) in preclinical research is expanding progressively, but the majority of resting state imaging is obtained in anesthetized animals. Since it is known that anesthesia may influence the functional connectivity (FC) outcome, we compared rsfMRI data from awake mice with results obtained from mice anesthetized with -chloralose, urethane or isoflurane (1%). Overall, we can conclude that to study interhemispheric FC using ICA in mice, a 15 component analysis should be used in urethane or -chloralose anesthetized animals. Moreover awake mouse rsfMRI is proven to be possible and useful but needs to be optimized.