Individual behavioral trajectories shape whole-brain connectivity in mice
Jadna Bogado Lopes,
Anna N Senko,
Klaas Bahnsen,
Daniel Geisler,
Eugene Kim,
Michel Bernanos,
Diana Cash,
Stefan Ehrlich,
Anthony C Vernon,
Gerd Kempermann
Affiliations
Jadna Bogado Lopes
German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) Dresden, Dresden, Germany; Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD), TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) Dresden, Dresden, Germany; Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD), TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Division of Psychological and Social Medicine and Developmental Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, Dresden, Germany; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Eating Disorder Treatment and Research Center, Dresden, Germany
Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College, London, United Kingdom; MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders, King's College, London, United Kingdom
German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) Dresden, Dresden, Germany; Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD), TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
It is widely assumed that our actions shape our brains and that the resulting connections determine who we are. To test this idea in a reductionist setting, in which genes and environment are controlled, we investigated differences in neuroanatomy and structural covariance by ex vivo structural magnetic resonance imaging in mice whose behavioral activity was continuously tracked for 3 months in a large, enriched environment. We confirmed that environmental enrichment increases mouse hippocampal volumes. Stratifying the enriched group according to individual longitudinal behavioral trajectories, however, revealed striking differences in mouse brain structural covariance in continuously highly active mice compared to those whose trajectories showed signs of habituating activity. Network-based statistics identified distinct subnetworks of murine structural covariance underlying these differences in behavioral activity. Together, these results reveal that differentiated behavioral trajectories of mice in an enriched environment are associated with differences in brain connectivity.
