Webinar Overview
Imaging and blood biomarker studies done in young males and females in our Centre have raised serious questions about return to play guidelines and rule changes for juvenile ice hockey and university rugby. Our results indicate potentially long term structural and functional changes in brains during these critical developmental years, even in individuals not reporting a concussion. To further explore these changes in a more controlled manner, we have developed a human relevant preclinical mouse model of mTBI that is much milder than what has been previously reported and which better mimics the rotational biomechanics of most mTBI. We use humanized mouse models with risk factors for Alzheimer’s Disease in addition to control animals to evaluate the time course of changes in resting-state fMRI and micro FA DTI along with careful touchscreen cognition tasks and immunofluorescence microscopy. By carefully characterizing the changes at the mesoscopic and microscopic scales using MRI and other biological probes, we can learn a great deal about the interplay between mTBI and future dementia risk.
This study is funded by the US Department of Defence, Brain Canada and BrainsCAN (The Canada First Research Excellence Fund).
On Demand Session
Speaker
Ravi Menon
Western University
