Neonatal frontal cortex grafts fail to attenuate behavioural deficits or abnormal cortical morphogenesis.

Following bilateral removal of the medial frontal cortex, which included the medial prefrontal and adjacent midline motor cortex, 4-day-old rats were given transplants of embryonic day 17 frontal cortical tissue. Other rats were given only frontal lesions or sham operations. In adulthood, the animals were trained on a spatial navigation task and a forelimb reaching task. The transplanted tissue grew well and interacted morphologically with the host but the grafts failed to reduce the spatial navigation and motor deficits resulting from the frontal removals. The grafts also failed to reduce the anatomical sequelae of the early lesions, which included cortical thinning and thalamic shrinkage. It appears unlikely that cortical transplantation will be a viable treatment for recovery from perinatal frontal cortical injury.