Mechanisms underlying recovery from early cortical injury in rats

Previous work has shown that removal of the midline frontal cortex at seven to ten days of age is followed by recovery of function correlated with apparent spontaneous generation of new tissue in the lesion cavity. The question asked in the present thesis was whether the removal of the regrown tissue in adulthood would block normal function. Rats that received P10 frontal lesions underwent second lesions at P160, and were compared to rats with only P10 or P160 lesions. Rats with P10 + P160 lesions were severely impaired on a spatial learning task, especially relative to the P10 lesion-only rats. In a second experiment, rats with P10 + P160 lesions were given intra-ventricular infusions of a cocktail of three growth factors. The animals with growth factors showed marked behavioral recovery, although there was no cell regeneration. The results of these experiments suggest that filled-in tissue in neonatally lesioned rats is functional.

Authors

• Dallison, Agnes
• University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science

• Brain -- Wounds and injuries
• Rats as laboratory animals
• Animal intelligence
• Dissertations, Academic

Identifier

hdl:10133/98

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:opus.uleth.ca:10133/98