Neuroscience Training Program, Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53705, USA.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA.
Transl Psychiatry. 2019 Feb 11;9(1):82. doi: 10.1038/s41398-019-0429-2.
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has provided remarkable insight into our understanding of white matter microstructure and brain connectivity across a broad spectrum of psychiatric disease. While DTI and other diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods have clarified the axonal contribution to the disconnectivity seen in numerous psychiatric diseases, absent from these studies are quantitative indices of neurite density and orientation that are especially important features in regions of high synaptic density that would capture the synaptic contribution to the psychiatric disease state. Here we report the application of neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI), an emerging microstructure imaging technique, to a novel Disc1 svΔ2 rat model of psychiatric illness and demonstrate the complementary and more specific indices of tissue microstructure found in NODDI than those reported by DTI. Our results demonstrate global and sex-specific changes in white matter microstructural integrity and deficits in neurite density as a consequence of the Disc1 svΔ2 genetic variation and highlight the application of NODDI and quantitative measures of neurite density and neurite dispersion in psychiatric disease.
扩散张量成像（DTI）为我们理解广泛的精神疾病中的白质微观结构和大脑连接提供了显著的洞察力。虽然 DTI 和其他扩散加权磁共振成像（MRI）方法已经阐明了轴突对许多精神疾病中出现的去连接的贡献，但这些研究中缺乏神经突密度和方向的定量指标，这些指标在高突触密度区域特别重要，因为它们可以捕捉到突触对精神疾病状态的贡献。在这里，我们报告了神经突方向分散和密度成像（NODDI）的应用，这是一种新兴的微观结构成像技术，用于一种新型的精神疾病 Disc1 svΔ2 大鼠模型，并证明了 NODDI 比 DTI 报告的组织微观结构具有更具互补性和特异性的指标。我们的结果表明，由于 Disc1 svΔ2 基因变异，白质微观结构完整性存在全局和性别特异性变化，以及神经突密度不足，并强调了 NODDI 以及神经突密度和神经突分散的定量测量在精神疾病中的应用。
