• Cole Vonder Haar, Travis R Smith, Eric J French, Kris M Martens, Eric A Jacobs, and Michael R Hoane.
• Restorative Neuroscience Laboratory and.
• Brain Inj. 2014 Jan 1;28(2):235-43.

Primary ObjectiveTo assess cognitive deficits in a rat model of brain injury.Research DesignCognitive deficits are some of the most pervasive and enduring symptoms of frontal traumatic brain injury (TBI) in human patients. In animal models, the assessment of cognitive deficits from TBI has primarily been limited to tests of spatial learning. Recently, simple discrimination performance has been shown to be sensitive to frontal brain damage. The current study provides a detailed characterization of deficits in a two-choice tone discrimination following a bilateral frontal controlled cortical impact injury.Methods And ProceduresRats were trained on a two-tone discrimination task in a standard operant chamber, then either a frontal brain injury was delivered or sham procedures performed. Following recovery, they were re-tested on the discrimination task and then tested on a reversal of the discrimination.Main Outcomes And ResultsFrontal injury caused substantial deficits in responding and discrimination accuracy as well as an increase in side bias.ConclusionsBased on the outcomes seen in this study, discrimination and other operant tasks may provide a sensitive tool to assess the effect of therapeutic agents on cognitive deficits in animal models, which could lead to improved characterization of deficits and yield an improved assessment tool to aid in drug discovery.

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