Murokh Sasha, Willerson Ezekiel, Lazarev Alexander, Lazarev Pavel, Mourokh Lev, Brumberg Joshua C
Stuyvesant High School, 345 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10282, USA; Matur UK Ltd., 5 New Street Square, London EC4A 3TW, UK.
Department of Psychology, Queens College of the City University of New York, 65-30 Kissena Blvd, Flushing, NY 11367, USA; Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA.
J Neurosci Methods. 2025 Sep 10;424:110582. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2025.110582.
Sensory experience impacts brain development. In the mouse somatosensory cortex, sensory deprivation via whisker trimming induces reductions in the perineuronal net, the size of neuronal cell bodies, the size and orientation of dendritic arbors, the density of dendritic spines, and the level of myelination, among other effects.
Using a custom-developed laboratory diffractometer, we measured the X-ray diffraction patterns of mouse brain tissue to establish a novel method for examining nanoscale brain structures. Two groups of mice were examined: a control group and one that underwent 30 days of whisker-trimming from birth an established method of sensory deprivation that affects the mouse barrel cortex (whisker sensory processing region of the primary somatosensory cortex). Mice were perfused, and primary somatosensory cortices were isolated for immunocytochemistry and X-ray diffraction imaging.
X-ray images were characterized using a specially developed machine-learning approach, and the clusters that correspond to the two groups are well separated in principal components space. We obtained the perfect values for sensitivity and specificity, as well as for the receiver operator curve classifier.
New machine-learning approaches allow for the first time x-ray diffraction to identify cortex that has undergone sensory deprivation without the use of stains.
We hypothesize that our results are related to the alteration of different nanoscale structural components in the brains of sensory deprived mice. The effects of these nanoscale structural formations can be reflective of changes in the micro- and macro-scale structures and assemblies with the neocortex.
感觉体验会影响大脑发育。在小鼠体感皮层中，通过修剪触须进行感觉剥夺会导致神经周网减少、神经元细胞体大小减小、树突分支的大小和方向改变、树突棘密度降低以及髓鞘形成水平改变等多种影响。
我们使用自行开发的实验室衍射仪测量小鼠脑组织的X射线衍射图谱，以建立一种检查纳米级脑结构的新方法。研究了两组小鼠：一组为对照组，另一组从出生起经历30天的触须修剪，这是一种影响小鼠桶状皮层（初级体感皮层的触须感觉处理区域）的既定感觉剥夺方法。对小鼠进行灌注，分离出初级体感皮层用于免疫细胞化学和X射线衍射成像。
使用专门开发的机器学习方法对X射线图像进行表征，在主成分空间中，对应于两组的聚类分得很开。我们获得了灵敏度、特异性以及接受者操作特征曲线分类器的理想值。
新的机器学习方法首次使X射线衍射能够在不使用染色剂的情况下识别经历过感觉剥夺的皮层。
我们推测，我们的结果与感觉剥夺小鼠大脑中不同纳米级结构成分的改变有关。这些纳米级结构形成的影响可能反映了新皮层微观和宏观尺度结构及组件的变化。
