Background: Environmental enrichment (EE) confers improvements in behavioral outcome and histopathology after experimental traumatic brain injury (TBI) vs. standard (STD) housing. However, as a model of rehabilitation, continuous EE is not clinically relevant due to the timing parameters of the typical EE and thus translatability could be limited. Specifically, TBI patients typically receive rehabilitation only after critical care has been provided and then only for 3-6 hours per day.
Objective: To mimic the clinic, the goal of this study was to determine whether delaying EE by three days and providing only six hours per day would provide benefits similar to continuous EE.
Methods: To address this rehabilitation relevant issue, isoflurane-anesthetized male rats were subjected to a controlled cortical impact (2.8 mm depth at 4 m/s) or sham injury and randomly assigned to TBI+EE (continuous), TBI+EE (3 day delayed, 6 hr day), and respective sham controls. Motor function (beam-balance/beam-walk) was assessed on post-operative days 1-5. Spatial learning/memory (Morris water maze) was evaluated on days 14-19.
Results: The data showed that EE, regardless of timing, improved motor and cognitive function compared to STD housing (p < 0.0001). Moreover, there were no differences between the TBI+EE (continuous) and TBI+EE (3 day delayed, 6 hr day), p > 0.05.
Conclusions: These data demonstrate that delayed and abbreviated EE produces motor and cognitive benefits similar to continuous EE after TBI and thus further supports EE as a preclinical model of neurorehabilitation. Ongoing studies are evaluating the effects of longer delays in implementing EE after TBI.
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© 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc.
