Neuroscience Graduate Program, Central Michigan University, MI, USA.
Restor Neurol Neurosci. 2012;30(4):325-33. doi: 10.3233/RNN-2012-120232.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) produces significant deficits in executive function, sensory-motor function, and on spatial learning tasks. We wish to study if recovery from TBI can be benefited by voluntary exercise.
A variation of the stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) task was employed to measure rats ability to obtain maximum reinforcers in a complex behavioral task. A 2 × 2 (lesion × treatment) experimental design was constructed with 31 weight restricted male Long-Evans rats which received either bilateral cortical contusions to the medial frontal cortex or sham preparations following the acquisition of the SSRT task (matched based on pre-surgical performance). Following surgery, rats were randomly assigned to either an environment with free access to running wheels or traditional single housing without running wheels.
Rats receiving a bilateral TBI performed significantly worse than sham operated rats on a complex task. Contrary to our original hypothesis, acute exercise following injury exacerbated the deficits in the complex task that did not return to levels of the injured rats without access to running wheels until post-TBI day 13.
We found a significant interaction between severe bilateral TBI and the introduction of voluntary exercise immediately post-injury. In this paradigm, voluntary wheel running exacerbated the TBI-induced deficit, rather than reducing it.
创伤性脑损伤（TBI）会导致执行功能、感觉运动功能以及空间学习任务方面的显著缺陷。我们希望研究 TBI 是否可以通过自愿运动来恢复。
采用停止信号反应时（SSRT）任务的变体来衡量大鼠在复杂行为任务中获得最大强化物的能力。采用 2×2（损伤×处理）实验设计，对 31 只接受双侧皮质挫伤的雄性 Long-Evans 大鼠进行研究，这些大鼠在获得 SSRT 任务后接受了双侧皮质挫伤（根据术前表现进行匹配）或假手术准备。手术后，大鼠被随机分配到有自由使用跑步轮的环境或没有跑步轮的传统单人饲养环境中。
接受双侧 TBI 的大鼠在复杂任务上的表现明显逊于假手术组大鼠。与我们最初的假设相反，受伤后立即进行急性运动加剧了复杂任务中的缺陷，直到受伤后第 13 天，没有使用跑步轮的受伤大鼠的水平才恢复正常。
我们发现严重双侧 TBI 和受伤后立即引入自愿运动之间存在显著的相互作用。在这种模式下，自愿轮跑加剧了 TBI 引起的缺陷，而不是减轻了缺陷。
