Cognitive and neuropsychiatric impairments vary as a function of injury severity at 12 months post-experimental diffuse traumatic brain injury: Implications for dementia development.

Cognitive and neuropsychiatric impairments vary as a function of injury severity at 12 months post-experimental diffuse traumatic brain injury: Implications for dementia development. Behav Brain Res. 2019 Feb 28;: Authors: Arulsamy A, Corrigan F, Collins-Praino LE Abstract Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common risk factor for later neurodegeneration, which can manifest as dementia. Despite this, little is known about the time-course of development of functional deficits, particularly cognitive and neuropsychiatric impairments, and whether these differ depending on the nature of the initiating insult. Therefore, this study investigated long term functional impairment at 12 months post-injury following diffuse TBI of different severities. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (420-480 g; 10-12 weeks) were either given a sham surgery (n = 14) or subjected to Marmarou's impact acceleration model of diffuse TBI for a single mild TBI (n = 12), repetitive mild TBI (3 mild diffuse injuries at 5 day intervals) (n = 14) or moderate to severe TBI (n = 14). At 12 months after injury, they were tested on a functional battery encompassing motor, neuropsychiatric (anxiety and depressive-like) and cognitive function. Our results showed that moderate to severe TBI animals exhibited significant impairments in cognitive flexibility (p = 0.009) on the Barnes maze when compared to age-matched sham animals. Neither repetitive mild TBI nor sing...
Source: Behavioural Brain Research - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research