An Overview of Anesthetic Procedures for Ferret (Mustela putorius furo) Preclinical Brain MRI: A Call for Standardization.

Neuroscience research has been increasingly active during the last 2 decades, largely driven by the high prevalence and increasing burden of neurologic disorders. While rodents are essential models for biomedical research of neurologic disorders, they lack similar brain anatomy and protein expression profiles to humans, thus limiting their translational value as models of traumatic brain injury, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease. The use of ferrets as a model species in neuroscience has been increasing due to their neuroanatomical similarities with humans, including a gyrencephalic brain and larger white matter-to-gray matter ratio.