Morris water maze deficits in rats following traumatic brain injury: lateral controlled cortical impact

This experiment utilized a laterally placed controlled cortical impact model of traumatic brain injury (TBI) to assess changes on spatial learning and memory in the Morris water maze (MWM). Adult rats were subjected to one of two different levels of cortical injury, mild (1 mm) or moderate (2 mm) de...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of neurotrauma Vol. 14; no. 9; p. 615
Main Authors Scheff, S W, Baldwin, S A, Brown, R W, Kraemer, P J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.09.1997
Subjects
Analysis of Variance
Animals
Brain Injuries - pathology
Brain Injuries - physiopathology
Brain Injuries - psychology
Case-Control Studies
Cerebral Cortex - pathology
Cognition Disorders - etiology
Cognition Disorders - pathology
Cognition Disorders - physiopathology
Disease Models, Animal
Escape Reaction - physiology
Exploratory Behavior - physiology
Hippocampus - pathology
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Maze Learning
Orientation - physiology
Rats
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
Reaction Time
Retention (Psychology)
Single-Blind Method
Swimming - physiology
Trauma Severity Indices
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Summary:This experiment utilized a laterally placed controlled cortical impact model of traumatic brain injury (TBI) to assess changes on spatial learning and memory in the Morris water maze (MWM). Adult rats were subjected to one of two different levels of cortical injury, mild (1 mm) or moderate (2 mm) deformation, and subsequently tested for their ability to learn (acquisition) or remember (retention) a spatial task, 7 or 14 days after injury. Results revealed an injury-dependent deficit for experimental animals compared to sham-operated controls. Not only did the TBI result in longer escape latencies, but also significant deficits in search time and relative target visits. Although the moderately injured animals demonstrated significant histopathology in the cortex and hippocampus, mildly injured subjects demonstrated no obvious tissue destruction, but did manifest significant behavioral change. These results demonstrate that a laterally placed controlled cortical impact is capable of producing significant cognitive deficits on both acquisition and retention paradigms utilizing the MWM.
ISSN:0897-7151
DOI:10.1089/neu.1997.14.615