Computational Brain Anatomy Laboratory, Cerebral Imaging Center, Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Integrated Program in Neuroscience, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Computational Brain Anatomy Laboratory, Cerebral Imaging Center, Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Neuroimage Clin. 2021;32:102868. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2021.102868. Epub 2021 Oct 29.
Prenatal exposure to maternal immune activation (MIA) is a risk factor for a variety of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. The timing of MIA-exposure has been shown to affect adolescent and adult offspring neurodevelopment, however, less is known about these effects in the neonatal period. To better understand the impact of MIA-exposure on neonatal brain development in a mouse model, we assess neonate communicative abilities with the ultrasonic vocalization task, followed by high-resolution ex vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on the neonatal (postnatal day 8) mouse brain. Early exposed offspring displayed decreased communicative ability, while brain anatomy appeared largely unaffected, apart from some subtle alterations. By integrating MRI and behavioural assays to investigate the effects of MIA-exposure on neonatal neurodevelopment we show that offspring neuroanatomy and behaviour are only subtly affected by both early and late exposure. This suggests that the deficits often observed in later stages of life may be dormant, not yet developed in the neonatal period, or not as easily detectable using a cross-sectional approach.
产前母体免疫激活 (MIA) 暴露是多种神经发育和精神疾病的危险因素。MIA 暴露的时间已被证明会影响青少年和成年后代的神经发育，但对于新生儿期的这些影响知之甚少。为了在小鼠模型中更好地了解 MIA 暴露对新生儿大脑发育的影响，我们使用超声发声任务评估新生儿的交流能力，然后对新生儿（出生后 8 天）的小鼠大脑进行高分辨率离体磁共振成像 (MRI)。早期暴露的后代表现出交流能力下降，而大脑解剖结构似乎基本不受影响，除了一些细微的变化。通过整合 MRI 和行为测定来研究 MIA 暴露对新生儿神经发育的影响，我们表明，后代的神经解剖结构和行为仅受到早期和晚期暴露的轻微影响。这表明，在生命的后期阶段经常观察到的缺陷可能是潜伏的，在新生儿期尚未发展，或者使用横断面方法不易检测到。
