Equipment

 

BRAIN provides access to and support for the equipment & facilities listed below. 

MR Imaging Suite

MR scanner

  • 9.4T Bruker Biospec® 

(kindly supported by a grant from UKRPIF)

Gradients

  • Main: 660 mT/m, 114mm id
  • Insert: 1000 mT/m, 60mm id

Coils

  • Four volume quadrature RF coils (86, 72, 39 & 23cm)
  • Rat and mouse two phase array coils
  • Surface 1H/13C coil
  • Arterial spin labelling coil
  • Mouse MRI CryoProbe (receive-only four-channel phased array)
  • Mouse and rat receive-only 3 x 1 optogenetic surface array coils

Physiological monitoring (SA instruments)

  • Temperature, respiration, heart rate, pulse oximetry, blood pressure

Auxiliary wet lab, preparation and perfusion rooms

Other Equipment & Facilities

EEG and biosensor systems (Pinnacle, 8400 3-channel and 8200 3EEG + 1Bio-channel) with Biopac analogue acquisition for bespoke recording with sampling rate up to 2kHz. Faraday cages for recordings in anaesthetised and in freely-moving rodents

Behavioural analysis suite (Cleversys Topscan with LocoScan and ObjectScan modules)

Behavioural testing equipment: open field arenas, Morris water maze, foot-fault, rotarod, rotameter, staircase test, beam walk etc.

Autoradiography equipment: acquisition camera, light box, analysis software (MCID), dark room, liquid scintillation counter

Cryostat for radioactive and cold sectioning (Bright OFT5000)

Laser Doppler system for blood flow measuring (Moor LAB 2-channel)

Surgical equipment and microscopes

Wet lab facilities for perfusions, histochemistry, molecular biology