Progesterone treatment following traumatic brain injury in the 11-day-old rat attenuates cognitive deficits and neuronal hyperexcitability in adolescence.

Progesterone treatment following traumatic brain injury in the 11-day-old rat attenuates cognitive deficits and neuronal hyperexcitability in adolescence. Exp Neurol. 2020 Apr 23;:113329 Authors: Lengel D, Huh JW, Barson JR, Raghupathi R Abstract Traumatic brain injury (TBI) in children younger than 4 years old results in cognitive and psychosocial deficits in adolescence and adulthood. At 4 weeks following closed head injury on postnatal day 11, male and female rats exhibited impairment in novel object recognition memory (NOR) along with an increase in open arm time in the elevated plus maze (EPM), suggestive of risk-taking behaviors. This was accompanied by an increase in intrinsic excitability and frequency of spontaneous excitatory post-synaptic currents (EPSCs), and a decrease in the frequency of spontaneous inhibitory post-synaptic currents in layer 2/3 neurons within the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), a region that is implicated in both object recognition and risk-taking behaviors. Treatment with progesterone for the first week after brain injury improved NOR memory at the 4-week time point in both sham and brain-injured rats and additionally attenuated the injury-induced increase in the excitability of neurons and the frequency of spontaneous EPSCs. The effect of progesterone on cellular excitability changes after injury may be related to its ability to decrease the mRNA expression of the β3 subunit of the voltage-gated...
Source: Experimental Neurology - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Exp Neurol Source Type: research