“…In humans and laboratory animals, TBI can induce the accumulation of alpha-synuclein (Knoblach and Faden, 1998;Thompson et al, 2005a;Uryu et al, 2003), and a neuroinflammatory response (Csuka et al, 1999;Holmin and Hojeberg, 2004;Holmin et al, 1995), similar to what is observed in PD (Braak et al, 2002(Braak et al, ,2006Gerhard et al, 2006;Imamura et al, 2003;McGeer et al, 1988). Lateral fluid percussion (LFP) injury, a model of experimental TBI (McIntosh et al, 1989;Thompson et al, 2005a), induces the presence of silver-stained and lipofuschin-containing neurons in the substantia nigra (SN) of adult rats (Hicks et al, 1996). However, the phenotype of the injured neurons was not determined, and no stereological evaluation of the number of nigrostriatal neurons was performed (Hicks et al, 1996).…”