In Vivo Imaging of CNS Injury and Disease

In vivo optical imaging is a powerful tool for studying cellular responses to injury and disease in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS). It provides new insights into axonal degeneration and regeneration, glial responses and neuroinflammation, changes in the neurovascular unit, and neural transplantations. Time-lapse imaging of cellular structures depicts the dynamic responses to injury and disease at a high spatiotemporal resolution, revealing unanticipated new principles and mechanisms at both acute and chronic time points. This review highlights recent advances in using in vivo optical imaging to understand the multicellular responses to CNS injury and disease, considering both a 2017 SfN Mini-Symposium and the published literature.

• 1
  In vivo imaging reveals reversible axon damage in clinically relevant models of CNS injury and disease, suggesting axonal rescue as a promising therapeutic strategy.
• 2
  Serotonergic axons in the brain exhibit an unusual capacity to regrow after injury, and this regrowth is functional and approximates the prelesion state.
• 3
  In vivo imaging of the neurovascular interface reveals the sequence of events leading to neurologic impairment, with BBB leakage and fibrin deposition preceding microglial activation and demyelination in neuroinflammatory disease models.