Simone Claudia Bosshard1, Christof Baltes1, Thomas Mueggler1, Markus Rudin1,2
1Institute for Biomedical Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; 2Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
fMRI in mice is challenging due to high demands in sensitivity. Using a cryogenic RF transceiver probe, BOLD fMRI of electrical forepaw stimulation was performed in mice under isoflurane anesthesia. The BOLD signal comprised a slow and a fast component, which may reflect different processing pathways. The two signal contributions were analyzed separately in the S1 somatosensory cortex and the thalamus and were shown to correlate well with the current amplitude of the stimulus. The segregation of the signal into two components might help to understand the underlying physiological processes.