Biophysical modeling of high field diffusion MRI demonstrates micro-structural aberration in chronic mild stress rat brain

Ahmad Raza Khan, Andrey Chuhutin, Ove Wiborg, Christopher D. Kroenke, Jens R. Nyengaard, Brian Hansen, Sune Nørhøj Jespersen*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

44 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. Immense heterogeneity in symptoms of depression causes difficulty in diagnosis, and to date, there are no established biomarkers or imaging methods to examine depression. Unpredictable chronic mild stress (CMS) induced anhedonia is considered to be a realistic model of depression in studies of animal subjects. Stereological and neuronal tracing techniques have demonstrated persistent remodeling of microstructure in hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and amygdala of CMS brains. Recent developments in diffusion MRI (d-MRI) analyses, such as neurite density and diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI), are able to capture microstructural changes and are considered to be robust tools in preclinical and clinical imaging. The present study utilized d-MRI analyzed with a neurite density model and the DKI framework to investigate microstructure in the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, caudate putamen and amygdala regions of CMS rat brains by comparison to brains from normal controls. To validate findings of CMS induced microstructural alteration, histology was performed to determine neurite, nuclear and astrocyte density. d-MRI based neurite density and tensor-based mean kurtosis (MKT) were significantly higher, while mean diffusivity (MD), extracellular diffusivity (Deff) and intra-neurite diffusivity(DL) were significantly lower in the amygdala of CMS rat brains. Deff was also significantly lower in the hippocampus and caudate putamen in stressed groups. Histological neurite density corroborated the d-MRI findings in the amygdala and reductions in nuclear and astrocyte density further buttressed the d-MRI results. The present study demonstrated that the d-MRI based neurite density and MKT can reveal specific microstructural changes in CMS rat brains and these parameters might have value in clinical diagnosis of depression and for evaluation of treatment efficacy.

Original languageEnglish
JournalNeuroImage
Volume142
Pages (from-to)421-430
Number of pages10
ISSN1053-8119
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Nov 2016

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Inc.

Keywords

  • Amygdala
  • Chronic mild stress
  • Diffusion
  • Histology
  • Kurtosis
  • Neurite density

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