Marina Broomfield

Please join us on Wednesday, October 30, 2024, 2:00 PM, for the next CIC Imaging Series.

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Speaker

Marina Broomfield
Master’s student, CoBrA Lab, Douglas Research Centre

Biography

Marina completed her Bachelor’s at McGill University in Pharmacology and Therapeutics and is completing her Master’s in the Computational Brain Anatomy Laboratory.

Title

Assessing Brain Structure and Function in Adult Male and Female Mice: A Multimodal Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Behavioral Study

Abstract

Sex-specific variations are prevalent across symptomatology, symptom severity, and age-of-onset within neuropsychiatric disorders. However, neuroscientific and preclinical research in model systems has often been carried out only in male vertebrates or has neglected to examine sex-differences in treatment response or experimental design. To this end, we have limited understanding of sex-differences in the fundamental properties of brain structure and function, and commonly used behavioral paradigms in mouse models. Here, we seek to report these differences using in vivo functional and structural magnetic resonance imagining (rsfMRI,sMRI), as well as a granular analysis of the open field test [OFT]. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of how the brain works, integrating multiple imaging modalities is essential. We report sex differences across anatomical volume, functional connectivity, and behavioral outcomes in baseline adult mice.