Fischer rats serve as a rodent model of high trait anxiety in neuroscience and drug discovery. Using ASL-based fMRI, we characterized Fischer rats with respect to their regional brain activity patterns and with reference to the standard Sprague-Dawley rat strain. Fischer rats clearly differed from Sprague-Dawley rats, but also split into two distinct subpopulations, with one showing a more deviant pattern than the other. Although it has remained elusive whether this is a trait or a state phenomenon, our data suggest that neuronal networks related to anxiety and/or depression are implicated.
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