Abstract
The mechanical properties of brain tissue play a pivotal role in neurodevelopment and neurological disorders. Yet, at present, there is no consensus on how the different structural parts of the tissue contribute to its stiffness variations. Here, we have gathered depth-controlled indentation viscoelasticity maps of the hippocampus of acute horizontal live mouse brain slices. Our results confirm the highly viscoelestic nature of brain tissue. We further show that the mechanical properties are non-uniform and at least related to differences in morphological composition. Interestingly, areas with higher nuclear density appear to be softer than areas with lower nuclear density.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 12517 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-11 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Scientific Reports |
| Volume | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 21 Aug 2018 |
Funding
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/20072013)/ERC grant agreement no. [615170], the Dutch Technology Foundation (STW) under the iMIT program (P11–13) and Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), which is financially supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The authors further thank M. Marrese, H. van Hoorn, T. Smit and L. Kooijman for fruitful discussions.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Seventh Framework Programme | 615170, FP/20072013 |
| European Research Council | |
| Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie | |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | |
| Stichting voor de Technische Wetenschappen | P11–13 |