1 Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
J Neurotrauma. 2014 May 15;31(10):873-88. doi: 10.1089/neu.2014.3328. Epub 2014 Apr 17.
Environmental enrichment (EE) emerged as a robust independent variable capable of influencing behavioral outcome in experimental studies after the fortuitous observation by renowned neuropsychologist Donald O. Hebb that rats raised as pets in his home performed markedly better on problem-solving tasks than those kept in the laboratory. In the subsequent years, numerous studies ensued demonstrating that EE was also capable of inducing neuroplasticity in normal (i.e., noninjured) rats. These behavioral and neural alterations provided the impetus for investigating EE as a potential therapy for traumatic brain injury (TBI), which, over the past two decades, has resulted in several reports. Hence, the aim of this review is to integrate the findings and present the current state of EE as a viable neurorehabilitation strategy for TBI. Using the specific key term searches "traumatic brain injury" and "environmental enrichment" or "enriched environment," 30 and 30 experimental TBI articles were identified by PubMed and Scopus, respectively. Of these, 27 articles were common to both search engines. An additional article was found on PubMed using the key terms "enriched environment" and "fluid percussion." A review of the bibliographies in the 34 articles did not yield additional citations. The overwhelming consensus of the 34 publications is that EE benefits behavioral and histological outcome after brain injury produced by various models. Further, the enhancements are observed in male and female as well as adult and pediatric rats and mice. Taken together, these cumulative findings provide strong support for EE as a generalized and robust preclinical model of neurorehabilitation. However, to further enhance the model and to more accurately mimic the clinic, future studies should continue to evaluate EE during more rehabilitation-relevant conditions, such as delayed and shorter time periods, as well as in combination with other therapeutic approaches, as we have been doing for the past few years.
环境丰富（EE）作为一种强大的独立变量出现，能够影响实验研究中的行为结果，这是著名神经心理学家 Donald O. Hebb 的偶然观察结果，他发现在家里当宠物饲养的大鼠在解决问题任务上的表现明显优于在实验室中饲养的大鼠。在随后的几年里，许多研究表明，EE 也能够诱导正常（即未受伤）大鼠的神经可塑性。这些行为和神经改变为研究 EE 作为创伤性脑损伤（TBI）的潜在治疗方法提供了动力，在过去的二十年里，已经有几篇报道。因此，本综述的目的是整合这些发现，并介绍 EE 作为 TBI 可行神经康复策略的现状。使用特定的关键词搜索“创伤性脑损伤”和“环境丰富”或“丰富环境”，在 PubMed 和 Scopus 上分别识别出 30 篇和 30 篇实验性 TBI 文章。其中，27 篇文章在两个搜索引擎中都有。在 PubMed 上使用关键词“丰富环境”和“液体冲击”又找到了一篇文章。对 34 篇文章的参考文献进行审查没有产生其他引用。34 篇出版物的压倒性共识是，EE 有益于各种模型引起的脑损伤后的行为和组织学结果。此外，在雄性和雌性以及成年和未成年大鼠和小鼠中都观察到了增强。总之，这些累积的发现为 EE 作为一种普遍而强大的临床前神经康复模型提供了强有力的支持。然而，为了进一步增强模型并更准确地模拟临床情况，未来的研究应继续评估在更具康复相关性的条件下（如延迟和较短的时间段）以及与其他治疗方法结合使用时的 EE，正如我们过去几年一直在做的那样。
