HOME
CAREER NETWORK
NEWS
HOTBEDS
EVENT CENTER
CAREER FAIRS
COMPANY PROFILES
RESEARCH STORE
ABOUT US
NEWSLETTERS Free Newsletters Archive My Subscriptions NEWS News by Subject News by Disease News by Date PLoS Search News Post Your News JoVE CAREER NETWORK Job Seeker Login Most Recent Jobs Search Jobs Post Resume Career Fairs Career Resources For Employers HOTBEDS Regional News US & Canada Biotech Bay Biotech Beach Genetown Pharm Country BioCapital BioMidwest Bio NC BioForest Southern Pharm BioCanada East US Device Europe Asia DIVERSITY PROFILES Company Profiles INTELLIGENCE Research Store INDUSTRY EVENTS Research Events Post an Event RESOURCES Real Estate Business Opportunities
by Tamar Blumenfeld-Katzir, Ofer Pasternak, Michael Dagan, Yaniv Assaf
Activity-induced structural remodeling of dendritic spines and glial cells was recently proposed as an important factor in neuroplasticity and suggested to accompany the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP). Although T1 and diffusion MRI have been used to study structural changes resulting from long-term training, the cellular basis of the findings obtained and their relationship to neuroplasticity are poorly understood.
Here we used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine the microstructural manifestations of neuroplasticity in rats that performed a spatial navigation task. We found that DTI can be used to define the selective localization of neuroplasticity induced by different tasks and that this process is age-dependent in cingulate cortex and corpus callosum and age-independent in the dentate gyrus.
We relate the observed DTI changes to the structural plasticity that occurs in astrocytes and discuss the potential of MRI for probing structural neuroplasticity and hence indirectly localizing LTP.