John James Walsh1, 2, Samuel Colles Grant1, 2
1Center for Interdisciplinary Magnetic Resonance, The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Tallahassee, FL, United States; 2Chemical & Biomedical Engineering, The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
The abdominal ganglia of the sea hare Aplysia californica was utilized to study the relaxation and diffusion properties of neurons in a tissue model under different osmotic states. Both 1H and 23Na MRI at 11.75 T were performed to quantify relaxation as a function of tonicity. The relationship of these parameters to cell volume changes can be used as a basis for understanding cell swelling, osmotic regulation and ionic redistributions in a neural tissue model and provide insight into the origins of sodium hyperintensities seen in ischemia and neurodegeneration.