ENHANCING FUNCTIONAL PLASTICITY AFTER CEREBRAL ISCHEMIA

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Nurses assume a key role in caring for survivors of head injury who have residual neurological and cognitive deficits. Head injury is a major public health problem. Cerebral ischemia is the most common cause of secondary brain injury after severe head trauma. Clinical conditions that commonly result from cerebral ischemia are learning and memory impairment, particularly spatial memory deficits. These altered cognitive states are believed to be amenable to environmental manipulations. The realization that the external environment influences plasticity (regeneration in neuronal pathways) in developing and normal animals and humans support the assumption that plasticity can be enhanced following brain damage. Exploration of the environment has been known to induce plastic events such as learning. It is then hypothesized that functional plasticity (plasticity with behavioral outcome) can be induced by manipulating the external environment and modeled in animals. This study will examine the effects of enriching the external environment on functional plasticity. Following ischemic injury, adult animals will be exposed to either enriched environment or standard (home cage) condition. After that they will then be tested on a spatial learning task (wayfinding) in the Morris water maze. In addition, gender differences will be examined. The knowledge acquired from this study will serve as a guide in developing therapies in the management of ischemic brain damage.