Fig. 1From: Effects of sustained i.c.v. infusion of lupus CSF and autoantibodies on behavioral phenotype and neuronal calcium signalingTechnical details of survival surgery. a All mice underwent unilateral implantation of a sterilized cannula into the right lateral ventricle and subcutaneous implantation of a primed Alzet mini-pump, connected to a cannula via vinyl catheter tubing. Both groups received artificial CSF (aCSF) for 4 days to facilitate postoperative recovery. Hereafter, infusion of the solution of interest was initiated [CNS SLE or control CSF samples in Study 1, purified brain-reactive autoantibodies (BRA) or aCSF in Study 2] and continued for 2 weeks. An oil drop “spacer” was used to prevent mixing of aCSF in the tubing and the experimental solution in the primed pump. b An animal moving freely following survival surgery. c Histological verification of coordinates obtained by post-mortem injection of Toluidine blue into the vinyl tubing cut at the neck level. d Verification of antibody diffusion: control section of the dry ice-fixed contralateral periventricular region after the 2-week i.c.v. administration of CNS SLE serum (e) and the same region in another brain showing diffusion gradient in fluorescence when CNS SLE serum was premixed with DyLight 488. Note: Images were digitized using an Axioskop 2 Plus microscope with a 5× objective and AxioVision 4.6 software (Carl Zeiss, Inc., CA, USA)Back to article page