Exercise training reinstates cortico-cortical sensorimotor functional connectivity following striatal lesioning: development and application of a subregional-level analytic toolbox for perfusion autoradiographs of the rat brain

Frontiers in Physics

Peng, Yu-Hao¹  Holschneider, Daniel P.¹  Guo, Yumei²  Wang, Zhuo²  Heintz, Ryan²  Myers, Kalisa G.²  Maarek, Jean-Michel I.³  Scremin, Oscar U.⁴ 

[1] Department of Biomedical Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering, School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA;Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Keck School of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA;Physiology Department, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA;Research Service, Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, USA

关键词: Functional brain mapping;    functional connectivity;    cereberal cortex;    Parkinson’s disease;    Rats;    Software Development;    Basal Ganglia;    Exercise;    motor training;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fphy.2014.00072

学科分类：物理（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Current rodent connectome projects are revealing brain structural connectivity with unprecedented resolution and completeness. How subregional structural connectivity relates to subregional functional interactions is an emerging research topic. We describe a method for standardized, mesoscopic-level data sampling from autoradiographic coronal sections of the rat brain, and for correlation-based analysis and intuitive display of cortico-cortical functional connectivity (FC) on a flattened cortical map. A graphic user interface “Cx-2D” allows for the display of significant correlations of individual regions-of-interest, as well as graph theoretical metrics across the cortex. Cx-2D was tested on an autoradiographic data set of cerebral blood flow (CBF) of rats that had undergone bilateral striatal lesions, followed by 4 weeks of aerobic exercise training or no exercise. Effects of lesioning and exercise on cortico-cortical FC were examined during a locomotor challenge in this rat model of Parkinsonism. Subregional FC analysis revealed a rich functional reorganization of the brain in response to lesioning and exercise that was not apparent in a standard analysis focused on CBF of isolated brain regions. Lesioned rats showed diminished degree centrality of lateral primary motor cortex, as well as neighboring somatosensory cortex–-changes that were substantially reversed in lesioned rats following exercise training. Seed analysis revealed that exercise increased positive correlations in motor and somatosensory cortex, with little effect in non-sensorimotor regions such as visual, auditory, and piriform cortex. The current analysis revealed that exercise partially reinstated sensorimotor FC lost following dopaminergic deafferentation. Cx-2D allows for standardized data sampling from images of brain slices, as well as analysis and display of cortico-cortical FC in the rat cerebral cortex with potential applications in a variety of autoradiographic and histologic studies.

【 授权许可】

CC BY