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M. Radiologic characterization using ML of the lactational neurodevelopmental Poly I:C rat model of schizophrenia and depression
Animal models offer an efficient means to study brain abnormalities associated with depression and schizophrenia. A recent neurodevelopmental rat model utilizing lactational exposure to polyriboinosinic-polyribocytidilic acid (Poly I:C) mimics the epidemiology and pathophysiology of these disorders. Notably, rats' offspring exhibit sex-dependent manifestations resembling schizophrenia-like symptoms in males and depression-like symptoms in females. Existing studies of this model report neuronal changes, linking immune activation to early developmental changes. However, the underlying pathology of depression and schizophrenia encompasses a broader spectrum yet to be fully unveiled.
Pairwise Correlation between each qMRI feature and animal state, i.e., healthy control vs. Poly I:C. The higher the overlap between the features, the brighter their correlation. The features organized by ROIs: shortcut for Hippocampus (Hippo). And medial Pre pre-frontal cortex (MPFC). With the ROIS, the statistical measures are explicit: the mean, standard deviation (SD), standard error of the mean (SE), skewness, kurtosis, and 5, 10, 25, 50 (median), 75, 90, and 95 percentile (prec.) values.
Features importance
After constructing the various models, which maps and brain regions contributed to those models were checked. Each repetition out of a hundred repetitions was counted if at least one feature from the combination of [brain region, quantitative MRI map] was part of the subset features that passes the stage of Spearman Correlation, the first stage in the features selection process. The maximum number of times it could be selected is 100, and the minimum is not to be chosen at all - 0. Each combination of [brain region, quantitative MRI map] is marked in the table according to the number of times it contributed to building the logistic regression model. The upper part is the females' section, and the lower is for males. CC- Corpus Callosum, Hippo.- Hippocampus, MPFC- Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex.