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Abstract #4530

Taurine Change in Visual Cortex of Neonatal Monocular Enucleated Rat: A Proton MRS Study

April M. Chow1,2, Iris Y. Zhou1,2, Shu Juan Fan1,2, Kannie W.Y. Chan1,2, Kevin C. Chan1,2, Ed X. Wu1,2

1Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China; 2Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China


Neonatal monocular enucleation has been used to study developmental mechanisms underlying visual perception and the cross-modal changes in the central nervous system caused by early loss of the visual input. In this study, we demonstrated that alteration in the metabolism of taurine in visual cortex accompanied with neonatal monocular enucleation could be monitored using 1H MRS at 7 T. The change in taurine signal with respect to creatine signal may possibly due to the increased taurine signal in the right control visual cortex, likely caused by the plasticity resulted from recruitment of resources to the remaining left eye for adaptation.