An approach to neural circuit reconstruction after brain injury targeting inflammation in the brain in elderly mice
Description: Brain injury often causes severe motor dysfunction, leading to difficulties with living a self-reliant social life. At the clinical and experimental level, lost motor functions often spontaneously recover owing to the compensatory reorganization of spared motor circuits, including the corticospinal tract (CST), but the adult brain is limited in its ability to restore neuronal connections. We tested whether voluntary training to promote reorganization of motor circuits and functional recovery in aged mouse model of brain injury. We found that reorganization of spared motor circuits and motor recovery were not induced in aged mice. However, we indicated that voluntary exercise significantly increased sprouting of CST axons and enhanced motor recovery in the impaired forelimb of aged mice after brain injury. We will investigate the factors that have caused the reorganization of neural circuits and functional recovery due to voluntary exercise in the future studies.
Amount: ¥4,030,000
Funding type: fellowship
Funder scheme: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Start date: 2017-04-01
End date: 2020-03-31
Investigator: Takashi TANAKA
Institution: Kanazawa Medical University
Funded outputs count: 2
Funder award ID: 17K13079
OpenAlex ID: G6982821040