Experimental neurology
-
Experimental neurology · Apr 2001
Therapeutic effects of environmental enrichment on cognitive function and tissue integrity following severe traumatic brain injury in rats.
Postinjury environmental enrichment (EE) has been shown to alter functional and anatomical outcomes in a number of injury paradigms, including traumatic brain injury (TBI). The question of whether EE alters functional outcome following TBI in a model which produces overt histopathological consequences has not been addressed. We investigated this question using the severe, parasagittal fluid percussion injury (FPI) model. ⋯ At 14 days post-TBI, enriched animals had approximately twofold smaller lesion areas in regions of the cerebral cortex posterior to the injury epicenter (-4.5, -5.8, -6.8 mm relative to bregma; P < 0.05) compared to injured/standard animals. In addition, overall lesion volume for the entire injured cortical hemisphere was significantly smaller in animals recovering in the enriched environment. These results indicate that noninvasive environmental stimulation is beneficial in attenuating cognitive deficits and preserving tissue integrity in a TBI model which causes cerebral contusion and cell death.