Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has had an essential role in furthering our understanding of brain physiology and function. fMRI techniques are nowadays widely applied in neuroscience research, as well as in translational and clinical studies. The use of animal models in fMRI studies has been fundamental in helping elucidate the mechanisms of cerebral blood flow regulation, and in the exploration of basic neuroscience questions, such as the mechanisms of perception, behavior, and cognition. Because animals are inherently noncompliant, most fMRI performed to date have required the use of anesthesia, which interferes with brain function and compromises interpretability and applicability of results to our understanding of human brain function. An alternative approach that eliminates the need for anesthesia involves training the animal to tolerate physical restraint during the data acquisition. In the present work we review these two different approaches to obtaining fMRI data from animal models, with a specific focus on the acquisition of longitudinal data from the same subjects.

Intravoxel Incoherent Motion (IVIM) is a recently rediscovered noninvasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method based on diffusion-weighted imaging. It enables the separation of the intravoxel signal into diffusion due to Brownian motion and perfusion-related contributions and provides important information on microperfusion in the tissue and therefore it is a promising tool for applications in neurological and neurovascular diseases. This review focuses on the basic principles and outputs of IVIM and details it major applications in the brain, such as stroke, tumor, and cerebral small vessel disease. A bi-exponential model that considers two different compartments, namely capillaries, and medium-sized vessels, has been frequently used for the description of the IVIM signal and may be important in those clinical applications cited before. Moreover, the combination of IVIM and arterial spin labeling MRI enables the estimation of water permeability across the blood-brain barrier (BBB), suggesting a potential imaging biomarker for disrupted-BBB diseases.

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Hypertension afflicts 25% of the general population and over 50% of the elderly. In the present work, arterial spin labeling MRI was used to non-invasively quantify regional cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebrovascular resistance and CO2 reactivity in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and in normotensive Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY), at two different ages (3 months and 10 months) and under the effects of two anesthetics, α-chloralose and 2% isoflurane (1.5 MAC). Repeated CBF measurements were highly consistent, differing by less than 10% and 18% within and across animals, respectively. Under α-chloralose, whole brain CBF at normocapnia did not differ between groups (young WKY: 61±3ml/100g/min; adult WKY: 62±4ml/100g/min; young SHR: 70±9ml/100g/min; adult SHR: 69±8ml/100g/min), indicating normal cerebral autoregulation in SHR. At hypercapnia, CBF values increased significantly, and a linear relationship between CBF and PaCO2 levels was observed. In contrast, 2% isoflurane impaired cerebral autoregulation. Whole brain CBF in SHR was significantly higher than in WKY rats at normocapnia (young SHR: 139±25ml/100g/min; adult SHR: 104±23ml/100g/min; young WKY: 55±9ml/100g/min; adult WKY: 71±19ml/100g/min). CBF values increased significantly with increasing CO2; however, there was a clear saturation of CBF at PaCO2 levels greater than 70 mmHg in both young and adult rats, regardless of absolute CBF values, suggesting that isoflurane interferes with the vasodilatory mechanisms of CO2. This behavior was observed for both cortical and subcortical structures. Under either anesthetic, CO2 reactivity values in adult SHR were decreased, confirming that hypertension, when combined with age, increases cerebrovascular resistance and reduces cerebrovascular compliance.