Brain maturation of the adolescent rat cortex and striatum: Changes in volume and myelination

Brain maturation of the adolescent rat cortex and striatum: Changes in volume and myelination

Mengler, L.
Khmelinskii, A.
Diedenhofen, M.
Po, C.
Staring, M.
Lelieveldt, B.P.F.
Hoehn, M.

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Intelligent Systems

2013-08-27

Longitudinal studies on brain pathology and assessment of therapeutic strategies rely on a fully mature adult brain to exclude confounds of cerebral developmental changes. Thus, knowledge about onset of adulthood is indispensable for discrimination of developmental phase and adulthood. We have performed a high-resolution longitudinal MRI study at 11.7 T of male Wistar rats between 21 days and six months of age, characterizing cerebral volume changes and tissue-specific myelination as a function of age. Cortical thickness reaches final value at 1 month, while volume increases of cortex, striatum and whole brain end only after two months. Myelin accretion is pronounced until the end of the third postnatal month. After this time, continuing myelination increases in cortex are still seen on histological analysis but are no longer reliably detectable with diffusion-weighted MRI due to parallel tissue restructuring processes. In conclusion, cerebral development continues over the first three months of age. This is of relevance for future studies on brain disease models which should not start before the end of month 3 to exclude serious confounds of continuing tissue development.

brain development
age-dependent T2 relaxation changes
age-dependent diffusion changes
myelination maturation
tissue restructuring during cerebral development
volume changes of cerebral structures during development

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:28cb9ab4-4f3b-4f35-931c-7eb54d1ee556

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.08.034

Elsevier

1053-8119

NeuroImage, 84, 2014

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2013 The Author(s)
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