Whole-brain comparison of rodent and human brains using spatial transcriptomics

Abstract

The ever-increasing use of mouse models in preclinical neuroscience research calls for an improvement in the methods used to translate findings between mouse and human brains. Using openly accessible brain-wide transcriptomic data sets, we evaluated the similarity of mouse and human brain regions on the basis of homologous gene expression. Our results suggest that mouse-human homologous genes capture broad patterns of neuroanatomical organization, but that the resolution of cross-species correspondences can be improved using a novel supervised machine learning approach. Using this method, we demonstrate that sensorimotor subdivisions of the neocortex exhibit greater similarity between species, compared with supramodal subdivisions, and that mouse isocortical regions separate into sensorimotor and supramodal clusters based on their similarity to human cortical regions. We also find that mouse and human striatal regions are strongly conserved, with the mouse caudoputamen exhibiting an equal degree of similarity to both the human caudate and putamen.

Subject-invariant feature learning for mTBI identification using LSTM-based variational autoencoder with adversarial regularization

“…The mouse model mimics many features of TBI seen in humans, including cell death, neuroinflammation, and changes in behavior (Morganti-Kossmann et al, 2010;Wiltschko et al, 2015;Ellenbroek and Youn, 2016;Marshall and Mason, 2019). An important similarity between mice and humans is in their genetic makeup, suggesting that findings from mouse studies can often be related to human (Breschi et al, 2017;Beauchamp et al, 2022). Nevertheless, while mice and human brains exhibit similarities, there are differences between mice and humans that must be considered when using them as models for brain injuries.…”

A cross-species study of sex chromosome dosage effects on mammalian brain anatomy

“…We finally sought to achieve a direct test for the spatial convergence between SCT effects in humans and mice -separately for XXY and XYY. To achieve this test, we restricted analysis to a subset of brain regions with well-established homology between humans and mice based on both comparative structural and functional studies 11,[19][20][21][22][23] , and a model proposed by Swanson and colleagues 21 which maps neuroanatomical regions based on 6 cytoarchitectonic and MRI-derived human atlases and 3 cytoarchitectonic mouse atlases (as well as 2 rat atlases). Human brain atlases include Brodmann 24,25 and Swanson 26 (cytoarchitectonic), and Desikan-Killiany 27 , Glasser 11 , and the Allen Institute for Brain Science (MRI-based).…”

“…The Allen Brain Institute 28 , Hof 29 , Paxinos and Franklin 30 were used as the mouse brain atlases. (Table 1) 11,[19][20][21][22][23] . For both the effect of an added X-or Y-chromosome, there was low global similarity between the effects on the human and mouse brain based on low correlation of effect sizes (added X cross-ROI r=-0.07; added Y cross-ROI r=-0.19; Figure 5; Table 1).…”