Long-term behavioral deficits and recovery after transient ischemia in middle-aged XXXX : Effects of behavioral testing.

@entity4798 @entity64 @entity73 @entity432 @entity35
PURPOSE: Most pre-clinical @entity64 studies address the acute phase after injury, with less attention to long-term effects of injury, treatment, and experimental testing itself. We addressed these questions: 1) Will functional deficits persist up to 8 weeks following transient @entity64 in older animals? 2) Will functional deficits resolve spontaneously, with time and/or repeated behavioral testing? METHODS: Male @entity35 (12 months) were pre-trained on behavioral tasks to provide baseline data and then underwent transient middle @entity432 (tMCAO) or sham surgery. We measured motor, sensory, cognitive and @entity73 over 8 weeks, and the extent of hemispheric @entity4798 . One cohort underwent behavioral testing once at 8 weeks post- @entity64 (LT); a second cohort (RLT) was tested at 3, 6 and 8 weeks post- @entity64 . RESULTS: Significant deficits were exhibited in all functional outcomes in both cohorts after 8 weeks. We observed some recovery in some behavioral parameters in both cohorts at 8 weeks. CONCLUSIONS: Deficits persist for at least 8 weeks after tMCAO. The greater spontaneous recovery seen in the RLT groups suggest that repeated testing did reduce the severity of these @entity64 . These findings have implications for designing future studies of agents to induce long-term functional recovery following @entity64 .
