Abstract: Manganese Enhanced MRI Assay of Spinal Cord Functional Connectivity

By: Xiaowei Zhang, Naomi Santa Maria, Samuel Barnes, and Russell E. Jacobs These studies looked to develop manganese-enhanced MRI for the examination of longitudinal spinal cord injury therapies. Previous to MeMRI extensive histology was needed on spinal tissue in order to characterize different therapies, these techniques however prevented longitudinal follow-up. Utilizing manganese as a retrograde tracer, 2,000 nanoliters of 200 mM MnCl2 was injected through a burr hole in the right lamina of adult female mice. The entire spinal cord and caudal portion of the brain were then imaged for four 400 micron sagittal T1 weighted slices 30 min, 8, 24, 48 and 72 hours after the injections. Interestingly, they were able watch manganese travel up the spinal cord into the brain stem, which pertains to what I am looking to do in the future. They saw that manganese intensity increased in the caudal part of the brain at 72 hours which is 24 hours post the time we are currently imaging the RVLM after spinal cord injections. We will be looking to examine a more acute time course of manganese uptake following spinal injections over the last month, this includes imaging the RVLM every 8 hours after injections. At some point it would be ideal to mimic these studies and observe manganese transport up the cord. However, more preliminary studies must first be done to facilitate this. ~JI