Alterations in anxiety and social behaviour in Npas4 deficient mice following photochemically-induced focal cortical stroke.

In this study we investigated the role of Npas4 in modulating these stroke-induced neuropsychiatric responses by comparing the performance of wildtype and Npas4(-/-) mice in various cognitive and behavioural tasks in a photochemical model of focal cortical stroke. We show that this stroke model results in impaired spatial recognition memory and a reduction in despair-like behaviour that affect both genotypes to a similar degree. Moreover, mice lacking Npas4 also show differences in some aspects of post-stroke sociability and anxiety. Specifically, we show that while stroke had no effect on anxiety levels in wildtype mice, Npas4(-/-) mice became significantly more anxious following stroke. In addition, Npas4(-/-) mice retained a greater level of sociability in the acute post-stroke period in comparison to their wildtype littermates. Thus, our findings suggest that Npas4 may be involved in post-stroke psychiatric changes related to anxiety and sociability. PMID: 27574128 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Behavioural Brain Research - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research