| dc.description.abstract | Recent studies suggest that clinically sound ventriculomegaly in dogs could be a preliminary
or an arrested form of the clinically significant hydrocephalus.
There are only a few longitudinal studies measuring ventricular volume changes over time,
but assessment of cognitive abilities associated with the change has not been completed.
Frontal lobe deficits, such as attention and inhibition have been shown to be the earliest signs
of hydrocephalus in humans.
We evaluated changes of ventricular volumes over time in fMRI trained dogs. Staying
completely motionless in the MR scanner while awake, entails at least two important cognitive
skills; attention and inhibition. Our research question was whether ventricular enlargement
developing over time has any effect on canine cognitive ability.
Seven healthy dogs 2-8 years old at the baseline scan and 4 years older at rescan participated
in a rigorous and gradual training for staying motionless (< 1 mm) in the MR scanner without
any sedation during a 6 minute-long structural MR sequence.
On T1 structural images, volumetric analyses of the lateral ventricles were completed by
software guided semi-automated tissue type segmentation. | en_US |
