Three-Dimensional Imaging of the Mouse Neurovasculature with Magnetic Resonance Microscopy

Knowledge of the three-dimensional (3D) architecture of blood vessels in the brain is crucial because the progression of various neuropathologies ranging from Alzheimer's disease to brain tumors involves anomalous blood vessels. The challenges in obtaining such data from patients, in conjunction with development of mouse models of neuropathology, have made the murine brain indispensable for investigating disease induced neurovascular changes. Here we describe a novel method for “whole brain” 3D mapping of murine neurovasculature using magnetic resonance microscopy (μMRI). This approach preserves the vascular and white matter tract architecture, and can be combined with complementary MRI contrast mechanisms such as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine the interplay between the vasculature and white matter reorganization that often characterizes neuropathologies. Following validation with micro computed tomography (μCT) and optical microscopy, we demonstrate the utility of this method by: (i) combined 3D imaging of angiogenesis and white matter reorganization in both, invasive and non-invasive brain tumor models; (ii) characterizing the morphological heterogeneity of the vascular phenotype in the murine brain; and (iii) conducting “multi-scale” imaging of brain tumor angiogenesis, wherein we directly compared in vivo MRI blood volume measurements with ex vivo vasculature data

Posture Does Not Matter! Paw Usage and Grasping Paw Preference in a Small-Bodied Rooting Quadrupedal Mammal

BACKGROUND: Recent results in birds, marsupials, rodents and nonhuman primates suggest that phylogeny and ecological factors such as body size, diet and postural habit of a species influence limb usage and the direction and strength of limb laterality. To examine to which extent these findings can be generalised to small-bodied rooting quadrupedal mammals, we studied trees shrews (Tupaia belangeri). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We established a behavioural test battery for examining paw usage comparable to small-bodied primates and tested 36 Tupaia belangeri. We studied paw usage in a natural foraging situation (simple food grasping task) and measured the influence of varying postural demands (triped, biped, cling, sit) on paw preferences by applying a forced-food grasping task similar to other small-bodied primates. Our findings suggest that rooting tree shrews prefer mouth over paw usage to catch food in a natural foraging situation. Moreover, we demonstrated that despite differences in postural demand, tree shrews show a strong and consistent individual paw preference for grasping across different tasks, but no paw preference at a population level. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Tree shrews showed less paw usage than small-bodied quadrupedal and arboreal primates, but the same paw preference. Our results confirm that individual paw preferences remain constant irrespective of postural demand in some small-bodied quadrupedal non primate and primate mammals which do not require fine motoric control for manipulating food items. Our findings suggest that the lack of paw/hand preference for grasping food at a population level is a universal pattern among those species and that the influence of postural demand on manual lateralisation in quadrupeds may have evolved in large-bodied species specialised in fine manipulations of food items

Fibroblast growth factor/fibroblast growth factor receptor system in angiogenesis.

Fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) are a family of heparin-binding growth factors. FGFs exert their pro-angiogenic activity by interacting with various endothelial cell surface receptors, including tyrosine kinase receptors, heparan-sulfate proteoglycans, and integrins. Their activity is modulated by a variety of free and extracellular matrix-associated molecules. Also, the cross-talk among FGFs, vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGFs), and inflammatory cytokines/chemokines may play a role in the modulation of blood vessel growth in different pathological conditions, including cancer. Indeed, several experimental evidences point to a role for FGFs in tumor growth and angiogenesis. This review will focus on the relevance of the FGF/FGF receptor system in adult angiogenesis and its contribution to tumor vascularization

Item reduction of the Voice Handicap Index (VHI) based on European translations.

Objective: Constructing an internationally applicable short-scale of the Voice Handicap Index (VHI). Methods: Subjects were 1,052 patients with 5 different types of voice disorder groups from Belgium, France, Sweden, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, and the USA. Different 9- and 12-item subsets were selected from the 30 VHI items using (1) the first factor of an unrotated factor analysis (narrow range subsets) and (2) the first three factors after promax rotation (broad range subsets). Country-specific subsets were selected to test deviations from the international subsets. For all subsets, reliability was investigated using Cronbach’s alphas and correlations with the total VHI. Validity was investigated using regression on voice disorder groups. All analyses were performed for the total and for all country-specific subject samples. Results: Reliability was high for all item subsets. It was lower for the international compared to the country-specific subsets and for the broad range compared to the narrow range subsets. Validity was best for the broad range subsets. Validity was better for the international than for the country-specific subsets. For all statistics the 12-item subsets were not essentially better than the 9-item subsets. Conclusion: The international broad range 9-item subset forms a scale which approximates well the total VHI