Abstract

The pharmacological effects on the brain will occur widely in whole brain. Therefore, pharmacological functional MRI (fMRI) is a promising non-invasive tool to investigate the whole brain activation following pharmacological stimulation. The multimodal fMRI techniques, which reflect the vascular response (blood oxygenation level dependent fMRI), neuron/astrocyte activity (diffusion fMRI) and Ca2+ influx in excitatory neurons (manganese enhanced MRI), enable to observe the neuronal activation in rodent model. In the present study, the multimodal pharmacological fMRI method in rodents will be introduced.

Keywords: Functional MRI, rodent, anesthesia, BOLD, DfMRI, MEMRI, pharmacological fMRI.

Graphical Abstract