Behavioral Deficits Following Experimental Subarachnoid Hemorrhage in the Rat

Abstract

To characterize some of the short-term and long-term functional consequences of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) in rats, we employed a battery of well-characterized tests for assessment of acute and chronic behavioral and neurologic performances. Three groups of 10 rats (blood injected, mock CSF injected and sham-operated controls) were studied. During the acute stage, simple nonpostural somatomotor reflexes (pinna and corneal reflexes), simple postural responses (paw flexion, tail flexion, and head support), startle response, and postural functions (righting reflex) did not differ significantly between the experimental groups. Assessments of body weight, beam walking ability, and beam balancing revealed significant disturbances in blood-injected rats. This work demonstrates that this single-hemorrhage rodent model of SAH is associated with the induction of enduring neurologic and behavioral deficits. Because of the significant interspecies difference, a direct extrapolation of our results to humans may not be appropriate. However, we suggest that the observed behavioral and neurologic changes may parallel those seen in humans after SAH. Results reported here further confirm the rat model of SAH as a viable laboratory instrument for the study of the pathophysiology of SAH and provide normative values for the evaluation of new treatment modalities.

Therapeutic Benefit of Intravenous Administration of Bone Marrow Stromal Cells After Cerebral Ischemia in Rats

“…NSS is a composite of motor, sensory, reflex, and balance tests. 26 In the severity scores of injury, 1 score point is awarded for the inability to perform the test or for the lack of a tested reflex; thus, the higher score, the more severe is the injury.…”

Effect of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Treatment and Forced Arm Use on Functional Motor Recovery After Small Cortical Ischemia

“…Table 1 shows a modified neurological score as composite of motor, sensory, and reflex tests. 17,19,20 Neurological function was graded on a scale of 0 (normal score) to 10 (maximal deficit score).…”

Brain energy metabolism in the acute stage of experimental subarachnoid haemorrhage: Local changes in cerebral glucose utilization

“…Three hours after the injections, a battery of tests was used to characterize the acute neurological consequences related to SAH [15]. This battery included assessments of simple non-postural somatomotor reflexes (pinna and corneal reflexes), simple postural responses (paw flexion, tail flexion and head support), startle response and postural functions (righting reflex).…”

“…Behavioural, neurological and pathological observations of the rat model of experimental SAH are described in detail elsewhere [3,6,14,15] remained stable during the procedure for all groups considered. Plasma glucose levels were significantly higher (p < 0.05) at 5, 60, and 180 min following SAH.…”

“…This model, developed also in our laboratory, has produced extensive information about changes in haemodynamic, biochemical, pathophysiological and behavioural parameters [3,4,6,14,15,25]. Although previous studies have described the brain's metabolic responses to SAH during the chronic stage [43] or the late phase of post-SAH cerebral vasospasm [7,8], few data are available on the changes in cerebral metabolic activity which develop acutely after SAH [12,13,26,49].…”