The impact of isoflurane anesthesia on brain metabolism in mice: An MRI and electroencephalography study

Isoflurane is one of the most widely used anesthetic agents in rodent imaging studies. However, the impact of isoflurane on brain metabolism has not been fully characterized to date, primarily due to a scarcity of noninvasive technologies to quantitatively measure the brain's metabolic rate in vivo. In this study, using noncontrast MRI techniques, we dynamically measured cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO₂) under varying doses of isoflurane anesthesia in mice. Concurrently, systemic parameters of heart and respiration rates were recorded alongside CMRO₂. Additionally, electroencephalogram (EEG) recording was used to identify changes in neuronal activities under the same anesthetic regimen employed in the MRI experiments. We found suppression of the CMRO₂ by isoflurane in a dose-dependent manner, concomitant with a diminished high-frequency EEG activity. The degree of metabolic suppression by isoflurane was strongly correlated with the respiration rate, which offers a potential approach to calibrate CMRO₂ measurements. Furthermore, the metabolic level associated with neural responses of the somatosensory and motor cortices in mice was estimated as 308.2 μmol/100 g/min. These findings may facilitate the integration of metabolic parameters into future studies involving animal disease models and anesthesia usage.