Anesthetic agents affect brain connectivity and/or neurovascular coupling, with confounding effects on BOLD resting-state fMRI. To date, the most widespread anesthesia protocol for fMRI in rats consists in isoflurane induction followed by medetomidine sedation. We report that, using this protocol, connectivity of default-mode sub-networks is affected in a time-dependent and region-dependent manner, with modules such as hippocampus becoming detectable as late as two hours into sedation. These spatio-temporal features have significant implications for the interpretation and comparison of resting-state studies in the rat, and of the default-mode network connectivity in particular.
This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.