Figure 4: Crush injuries to the rat spinal cord lead to tissue softening.
From: The soft mechanical signature of glial scars in the central nervous system
(a) Schematic drawing of a dorsal column crush lesion. After a laminectomy at the C5 level, the dura is opened and the spinal cord is penetrated with a pair of sharp forceps (∼1.5 mm deep). Two closures of the forceps for 10 s each crush the dorsal column, creating an injury in both white and grey matter. The dashed rectangle depicts the approximate area in which AFM measurements were performed. (b) Transverse spinal cord section of a sham control depicting the outlines of grey (R1) and white (R2) matter in the area of interest (dashed lines). The colour map represents the spatial distribution of elastic moduli in the grey and white matter. (c) Transverse spinal cord section of an animal with a dorsal column crush lesion at 7 days PI. The approximate outlines of the injury are indicated by the red dashed lines. The colour map represents the spatial distribution of elastic moduli in both healthy and injured grey (R1 and R3, respectively) and healthy and injured white matter (R2 and R4, respectively). Scale bars, 500 μm. (d) Comparison of the elastic properties of grey and white matter in the control animal shown in (b). Grey matter was significantly stiffer than white matter (P<0.001, two-tailed Student t-test). (e) Comparison of the elastic moduli of the different tissue regions between four pooled control animals shown in Supplementary Fig. 5 and the tissue shown in (c). (f) Average relative drop in elastic modulus of the regions indicated in (c) compared to pooled control shams. Error bars are s.e.m., ***P<0.001.
