Posttraumatic learning deficits correlate with initial trauma severity and chronic cellular reactions after closed head injury in male mice

The relevance of the study is related to the high frequency of blast-induced brain injury in both military and civilian populations, which is caused by the use of various types of explosives in military conflicts, including in Ukraine today. Changes of biometals in the acute period of a mild blast-induced traumatic brain injury, including forebrain that participates in the implementation of various behavioral and cognitive processes, remain unexplained. The study was carried out on 54 sexually mature male Wistar rats, which were divided into 3 groups: experimental (influenced by a baroacoustic wave with an excess pressure of 26-36 kPa, previously anesthetized with halothane and softly fixed), sham (under the influence of halothane and fixation), intact. Behavior was studied in an elevated plus maze. Biometals in the forebrain were determined using energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis. Standard deviation, Mann-Whitney U test (р<0.01, р<0.05), Spearman's correlation coefficient (r, р<0.01) were statistically calculated. According to the results of the study, behavioral changes in the elevated plus maze were found in the rats of the experimental group, which indicate the absence of fear on day 1 and 3 and the increase of anxiety on day 7 of the post-traumatic period. Spectral analysis of the forebrain showed significant (р<0.01) changes in the Cu/Fe, Cu/Zn and Zn/Fe ratios, which are the result of iron accumulation due to disruption of the blood-brain barrier. The obtained changes in the ratio of biometals lead to the development of anxiety, which is confirmed by correlation analysis. This indicates that the imbalance of biometals is an important secondary factor in the pathogenesis of blast-induced brain traumatic injury, which is important to consider for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of complications.

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IntelliCage: the development and perspectives of a mouse- and user-friendly automated behavioral test system

Lipp,

Krackow,

Turkes

et al. 2024

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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IntelliCage for mice is a rodent home-cage equipped with four corner structures harboring symmetrical double panels for operant conditioning at each of the two sides, either by reward (access to water) or by aversion (non-painful stimuli: air-puffs, LED lights). Corner visits, nose-pokes and actual licks at bottle-nipples are recorded individually using subcutaneously implanted transponders for RFID identification of up to 16 adult mice housed in the same home-cage. This allows for recording individual in-cage activity of mice and applying reward/punishment operant conditioning schemes in corners using workflows designed on a versatile graphic user interface. IntelliCage development had four roots: (i) dissatisfaction with standard approaches for analyzing mouse behavior, including standardization and reproducibility issues, (ii) response to handling and housing animal welfare issues, (iii) the increasing number of mouse models had produced a high work burden on classic manual behavioral phenotyping of single mice. and (iv), studies of transponder-chipped mice in outdoor settings revealed clear genetic behavioral differences in mouse models corresponding to those observed by classic testing in the laboratory. The latter observations were important for the development of home-cage testing in social groups, because they contradicted the traditional belief that animals must be tested under social isolation to prevent disturbance by other group members. The use of IntelliCages reduced indeed the amount of classic testing remarkably, while its flexibility was proved in a wide range of applications worldwide including transcontinental parallel testing. Essentially, two lines of testing emerged: sophisticated analysis of spontaneous behavior in the IntelliCage for screening of new genetic models, and hypothesis testing in many fields of behavioral neuroscience. Upcoming developments of the IntelliCage aim at improved stimulus presentation in the learning corners and videotracking of social interactions within the IntelliCage. Its main advantages are (i) that mice live in social context and are not stressfully handled for experiments, (ii) that studies are not restricted in time and can run in absence of humans, (iii) that it increases reproducibility of behavioral phenotyping worldwide, and (iv) that the industrial standardization of the cage permits retrospective data analysis with new statistical tools even after many years.

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Posttraumatic learning deficits correlate with initial trauma severity and chronic cellular reactions after closed head injury in male mice

Cited by 5 publications

References 24 publications

Conceptualization and standardization of a non-invasive closed head injury model using directed shockwave to mice

Conceptualization and standardization of a non-invasive closed head injury model using directed shockwave to mice

Trace elements changes in the forebrain and their influence on the rats behavior in elevated plus maze in acute period of mild blast-induced traumatic brain injury

IntelliCage: the development and perspectives of a mouse- and user-friendly automated behavioral test system

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