Post-traumatic morbidity reduces the quality of life for traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivors by altering neuropsychological function. After midline fluid percussion injury (FPI), diffuse pathology in the ventral posterior thalamus suggests that somatosensory whisker function may be impaired post-injury. The goals of the present study were to design and validate a task to detect injury-induced somatosensory morbidity (Experiment 1), and to evaluate preliminary applications of the task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to moderate FPI (*1.9 atm) or sham injury. Over an 8-week time course, the whiskers on both mystacial pads were stimulated manually with an applicator stick in an open field for three 5-min periods. Behavioral responses in this whisker nuisance task were recorded using objective criteria (max score ¼ 16). Sham animals were ambivalent or soothed by whisker stimulation (4.0 AE 0.8), whereas brain-injured rats showed aggravated responses at 1 week (6.7 AE 0.9), which became significant at 4 weeks (9.5 AE 0.5) and 8 weeks (8.4 AE 1.1) compared to sham injury, indicating chronic injury-induced sensory sensitivity. Total free serum corticosterone levels indicated a significant stress response in brain-injured (125.0 AE 17.7 ng=mL), but not uninjured animals (74.2 AE 12.2 ng=mL) in response to whisker stimulation. In Experiment 2, to evaluate applications of the whisker nuisance task, four additional uninjured and brain-injured groups were subjected to mild brain injury only, shaved whiskers after moderate brain injury, repeated whisker nuisance task stimulation after moderate brain injury, or regular opportunities for tactile exploration of an enriched environment after moderate brain injury over 4 weeks post-injury. The whisker nuisance task has the sensitivity to detect mild brain injury (7.7 AE 1.0), but morbidity was not mitigated by any of the neurorehabilitative interventions. Following diffuse brain injury, the whisker nuisance task is a promising tool to detect post-traumatic morbidity and the efficacy of therapeutic interventions that may restore discrete circuit function in brain-injured patients.

Disruption and consequent reorganization of central nervous system circuits following traumatic brain injury may manifest as functional deficits and behavioral morbidities. We previously reported axotomy and neuronal atrophy in the ventral basal (VB) complex of the thalamus, without gross degeneration after experimental diffuse brain injury in adult rats. Pathology in VB coincided with the development of late-onset aberrant behavioral responses to whisker stimulation, which lead to the current hypothesis that neurodegeneration after experimental diffuse brain injury includes the primary somatosensory barrel cortex (S1BF), which receives projection of VB neurons and mediates whisker somatosensation. Over 28 days after midline fluid percussion brain injury, argyrophilic reaction product within superficial layers and layer IV barrels at 1 day progresses into the cortex to subcortical white matter by 7 days, and selective inter-barrel septa and subcortical white matter labeling at 28 days. Cellular consequences were determined by stereological estimates of neuronal nuclear volumes and number. In all cortical layers, neuronal nuclear volumes significantly atrophied by 42–49% at 7 days compared to sham, which marginally attenuated by 28 days. Concomitantly, the number of healthy neurons was reduced by 34–45% at 7 days compared to sham, returning to control levels by 28 days. Progressive neurodegeneration, including argyrophilic reaction product and neuronal nuclear atrophy, indicates injury-induced damage and reorganization of the reciprocal thalamocortical projections that mediate whisker somatosensation. The rodent whisker barrel circuit may serve as a discrete model to evaluate the causes and consequences of circuit reorganization after diffuse brain injury.