Preserving functional network structure under anesthesia in the marmoset monkey brain

Initiatives towards acquiring large-scale neuroimaging data in non-human primates promise improving translational neuroscience and cross-species comparisons. Crucial among these efforts is the need to expand sample sizes while reducing the impact of anesthesia on the functional properties of brain networks. Yet, the effects of anesthesia on non-human primate brain networks remains unclear. Here, we demonstrate that isoflurane anesthesia induces a variety of brain states in the marmoset brain with dramatically altered functional connectivity profiles. As an alternative, we recommend using a continuous infusion of the sedative medetomidine, supplemented with a low concentration of isoflurane. With this protocol, we observed robust visual activation during flickering light stimulation and identified resting-state networks similar to the awake state. In contrast, isoflurane alone led to a suppressed visual activation and the absence of awake-like network patterns. Comparing states using a graph-theoretical approach, we confirmed that the structure of functional networks is preserved under our proposed anesthesia protocol but is lost using isoflurane alone. We believe that the widespread adoption of this protocol will be a step towards advancing translational neuroscience initiatives in non-human primate neuroimaging. To promote the shared use of neuroimaging resources, we share our datasets on the Marmoset connectome project. HighlightsO_LIMedetomidine combined with isoflurane is an effective protocol for driving visual BOLD responses compared to isoflurane-only anesthesia. C_LIO_LIIndependent component analysis revealed similar resting-state networks for medetomidine-isoflurane anesthesia and awake states. C_LIO_LIThe structure of resting-state networks was maintained under medetomidine-isoflurane but lost under isoflurane-only anesthesia. C_LI