Using Operant Reach Chambers to Assess Mouse Skilled Forelimb Use After Stroke.

Skilled forelimb reaching and grasping are important components of rodent motor performance. The isometric pull task can serve as a tool for quantifying forelimb function following stroke or other CNS injury as well as in forelimb rehabilitation. This task has been extensively developed for use in rats. Here, we describe methods of setup and training of an operant reach chamber for mice. Using a reward of peanut oil, mice are adaptively trained to pull a handle positioned slightly outside of an operant chamber, with automated recording of the number of attempts, force generated, success rate, and latency to maximal force.

The Knob Supination Task: A Semi-automated Method for Assessing Forelimb Function in Rats.

Tasks that accurately measure dexterity in animal models are critical to understand hand function. Current rat behavioral tasks that measure dexterity largely use video analysis of reaching or food manipulation. While these tasks are easy to implement and are robust across disease models, they are subjective and laborious for the experimenter. Automating traditional tasks or creating new automated tasks can make the tasks more efficient, objective, and quantitative. Since rats are less dexterous than primates, central nervous system (CNS) injury produces more subtle deficits in dexterity, however, supination is highly affected in rodents and crucial to hand function in primates. Therefore, we designed a semi-automated task that measures forelimb supination in rats. Rats are trained to reach and grasp a knob-shaped manipulandum and turn the manipulandum in supination to receive a reward. Rats can acquire the skill within 20 ± 5 days. While the early part of training is highly supervised, much of the training is done without direct supervision. The task reliably and reproducibly captures subtle deficits after injury and shows functional recovery that accurately reflects clinical recovery curves. Analysis of data is performed by specialized software through a graphical user interface that is designed to be intuitive. We also give solutions to common problems encountered during training, and show that minor corrections to behavior early in training produce reliable acquisition of supination. Thus, the knob supination task provides efficient and quantitative evaluation of a critical movement for dexterity in rats.

Knockdown of Dyslexia-Gene Dcdc2 Interferes with Speech Sound Discrimination in Continuous Streams.

UNLABELLED: Dyslexia is the most common developmental language disorder and is marked by deficits in reading and phonological awareness. One theory of dyslexia suggests that the phonological awareness deficit is due to abnormal auditory processing of speech sounds. Variants in DCDC2 and several other neural migration genes are associated with dyslexia and may contribute to auditory processing deficits. In the current study, we tested the hypothesis that RNAi suppression of Dcdc2 in rats causes abnormal cortical responses to sound and impaired speech sound discrimination. In the current study, rats were subjected in utero to RNA interference targeting of the gene Dcdc2 or a scrambled sequence. Primary auditory cortex (A1) responses were acquired from 11 rats (5 with Dcdc2 RNAi; DC-) before any behavioral training. A separate group of 8 rats (3 DC-) were trained on a variety of speech sound discrimination tasks, and auditory cortex responses were acquired following training. Dcdc2 RNAi nearly eliminated the ability of rats to identify specific speech sounds from a continuous train of speech sounds but did not impair performance during discrimination of isolated speech sounds. The neural responses to speech sounds in A1 were not degraded as a function of presentation rate before training. These results suggest that A1 is not directly involved in the impaired speech discrimination caused by Dcdc2 RNAi. This result contrasts earlier results using Kiaa0319 RNAi and suggests that different dyslexia genes may cause different deficits in the speech processing circuitry, which may explain differential responses to therapy. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Although dyslexia is diagnosed through reading difficulty, there is a great deal of variation in the phenotypes of these individuals. The underlying neural and genetic mechanisms causing these differences are still widely debated. In the current study, we demonstrate that suppression of a candidate-dyslexia gene causes deficits on tasks of rapid stimulus processing. These animals also exhibited abnormal neural plasticity after training, which may be a mechanism for why some children with dyslexia do not respond to intervention. These results are in stark contrast to our previous work with a different candidate gene, which caused a different set of deficits. Our results shed some light on possible neural and genetic mechanisms causing heterogeneity in the dyslexic population.

A Within-Animal Comparison of Skilled Forelimb Assessments in Rats.

A variety of skilled reaching tasks have been developed to evaluate forelimb function in rodent models. The single pellet skilled reaching task and pasta matrix task have provided valuable insight into recovery of forelimb function in models of neurological injury and disease. Recently, several automated measures have been developed to reduce the cost and time burden of forelimb assessment in rodents. Here, we provide a within-subject comparison of three common forelimb assessments to allow direct evaluation of sensitivity and efficiency across tasks. Rats were trained to perform the single pellet skilled reaching task, the pasta matrix task, and the isometric pull task. Once proficient on all three tasks, rats received an ischemic lesion of motor cortex and striatum to impair use of the trained limb. On the second week post-lesion, all three tasks measured a significant deficit in forelimb function. Performance was well-correlated across tasks. By the sixth week post-lesion, only the isometric pull task measured a significant deficit in forelimb function, suggesting that this task is more sensitive to chronic impairments. The number of training days required to reach asymptotic performance was longer for the isometric pull task, but the total experimenter time required to collect and analyze data was substantially lower. These findings suggest that the isometric pull task represents an efficient, sensitive measure of forelimb function to facilitate preclinical evaluation in models of neurological injury and disease.

Vagus nerve stimulation during rehabilitative training improves functional recovery after intracerebral hemorrhage.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) delivered during rehabilitative training enhances neuroplasticity and improves recovery in models of cortical ischemic stroke. However, VNS therapy has not been applied in a model of subcortical intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). We hypothesized that VNS paired with rehabilitative training after ICH would enhance recovery of forelimb motor function beyond rehabilitative training alone. METHODS: Rats were trained to perform an automated, quantitative measure of forelimb function. Once proficient, rats received an intrastriatal injection of bacterial collagenase to induce ICH. Rats then underwent VNS paired with rehabilitative training (VNS+Rehab; n=14) or rehabilitative training without VNS (Rehab; n=12). Rehabilitative training began ≥9 days after ICH and continued for 6 weeks. RESULTS: VNS paired with rehabilitative training significantly improved recovery of forelimb function when compared with rehabilitative training without VNS. The VNS+Rehab group displayed a 77% recovery of function, whereas the Rehab group only exhibited 29% recovery. Recovery was sustained after cessation of stimulation. Both groups performed similar amounts of trials during rehabilitative, and lesion size was not different between groups. CONCLUSIONS: VNS paired with rehabilitative training confers significantly improved forelimb recovery after ICH compared to rehabilitative training without VNS.

The timing and amount of vagus nerve stimulation during rehabilitative training affect poststroke recovery of forelimb strength.

Loss of upper arm strength after stroke is a leading cause of disability. Strategies that can enhance the benefits of rehabilitative training could improve motor function after stroke. Recent studies in a rat model of ischemic stroke have demonstrated that vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) paired with rehabilitative training substantially improves recovery of forelimb strength compared with extensive rehabilitative training without VNS. Here we report that the timing and amount of stimulation affect the degree of forelimb strength recovery. Similar amounts of Delayed VNS delivered 2 h after daily rehabilitative training sessions resulted in significantly less improvement compared with that on delivery of VNS that is paired with identical rehabilitative training. Significantly less recovery also occurred when several-fold more VNS was delivered during rehabilitative training. Both delayed and additional VNS confer moderately improved recovery compared with extensive rehabilitative training without VNS, but fail to enhance recovery to the same degree as VNS that is timed to occur with successful movements. These findings confirm that VNS paired with rehabilitative training holds promise for restoring forelimb strength poststroke and indicate that both the timing and the amount of VNS should be optimized to maximize therapeutic benefits.

Speech sound processing deficits and training-induced neural plasticity in rats with dyslexia gene knockdown.

In utero RNAi of the dyslexia-associated gene Kiaa0319 in rats (KIA-) degrades cortical responses to speech sounds and increases trial-by-trial variability in onset latency. We tested the hypothesis that KIA- rats would be impaired at speech sound discrimination. KIA- rats needed twice as much training in quiet conditions to perform at control levels and remained impaired at several speech tasks. Focused training using truncated speech sounds was able to normalize speech discrimination in quiet and background noise conditions. Training also normalized trial-by-trial neural variability and temporal phase locking. Cortical activity from speech trained KIA- rats was sufficient to accurately discriminate between similar consonant sounds. These results provide the first direct evidence that assumed reduced expression of the dyslexia-associated gene KIAA0319 can cause phoneme processing impairments similar to those seen in dyslexia and that intensive behavioral therapy can eliminate these impairments.

Vagus nerve stimulation delivered during motor rehabilitation improves recovery in a rat model of stroke.

Neural plasticity is widely believed to support functional recovery following brain damage. Vagus nerve stimulation paired with different forelimb movements causes long-lasting map plasticity in rat primary motor cortex that is specific to the paired movement. We tested the hypothesis that repeatedly pairing vagus nerve stimulation with upper forelimb movements would improve recovery of motor function in a rat model of stroke. Rats were separated into 3 groups: vagus nerve stimulation during rehabilitation (rehab), vagus nerve stimulation after rehab, and rehab alone. Animals underwent 4 training stages: shaping (motor skill learning), prelesion training, postlesion training, and therapeutic training. Rats were given a unilateral ischemic lesion within motor cortex and implanted with a left vagus nerve cuff. Animals were allowed 1 week of recovery before postlesion baseline training. During the therapeutic training stage, rats received vagus nerve stimulation paired with each successful trial. All 17 trained rats demonstrated significant contralateral forelimb impairment when performing a bradykinesia assessment task. Forelimb function was recovered completely to prelesion levels when vagus nerve stimulation was delivered during rehab training. Alternatively, intensive rehab training alone (without stimulation) failed to restore function to prelesion levels. Delivering the same amount of stimulation after rehab training did not yield improvements compared with rehab alone. These results demonstrate that vagus nerve stimulation repeatedly paired with successful forelimb movements can improve recovery after motor cortex ischemia and may be a viable option for stroke rehabilitation.

Similarity of cortical activity patterns predicts generalization behavior.

Humans and animals readily generalize previously learned knowledge to new situations. Determining similarity is critical for assigning category membership to a novel stimulus. We tested the hypothesis that category membership is initially encoded by the similarity of the activity pattern evoked by a novel stimulus to the patterns from known categories. We provide behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that activity patterns in primary auditory cortex contain sufficient information to explain behavioral categorization of novel speech sounds by rats. Our results suggest that category membership might be encoded by the similarity of the activity pattern evoked by a novel speech sound to the patterns evoked by known sounds. Categorization based on featureless pattern matching may represent a general neural mechanism for ensuring accurate generalization across sensory and cognitive systems.

The bradykinesia assessment task: an automated method to measure forelimb speed in rodents.

Bradykinesia in upper extremities is associated with a wide variety of motor disorders; however, there are few tasks that assay forelimb movement speed in rodent models. This study describes the bradykinesia assessment task, a novel method to quantitatively measure forelimb speed in rats. Rats were trained to reach out through a narrow slot in the cage and rapidly press a lever twice within a predefined time window to receive a food reward. The task provides measurement of multiple parameters of forelimb function, including inter-press interval, number of presses per trial, and success rate. The bradykinesia assessment task represents a significant advancement in evaluating bradykinesia in rat models because it directly measures forelimb speed. The task is fully automated, so a single experimenter can test multiple animals simultaneously with typically in excess of 300 trials each per day, resulting in high statistical power. Several parameters of the task can be modified to adjust difficulty, which permits application to a broad spectrum of motor dysfunction models. Here we show that two distinct models of brain damage, ischemic lesions of primary motor cortex and hemorrhagic lesions of the dorsolateral striatum, cause impairment in all facets of performance measured by the task. The bradykinesia assessment task provides insight into bradykinesia and motor dysfunction in multiple disease models and may be useful in assessing therapies that aim to improve forelimb function following brain damage.

The isometric pull task: a novel automated method for quantifying forelimb force generation in rats.

Reach-to-grasp tasks are commonly used to assess forelimb function in rodent models. While these tasks have been useful for investigating several facets of forelimb function, they are typically labor-intensive and do not directly quantify physiological parameters. Here we describe the isometric pull task, a novel method to measure forelimb strength and function in rats. Animals were trained to reach outside the cage, grasp a handle attached to a stationary force transducer, and pull with a predetermined amount of force to receive a food reward. This task provides quantitative data on operant forelimb force generation. Multiple parameters can be measured with a high degree of accuracy, including force, success rate, pull attempts, and latency to maximal force. The task is fully automated, allowing a single experimenter to test multiple animals simultaneously with usually more than 300 trials per day, providing more statistical power than most other forelimb motor tasks. We demonstrate that an ischemic lesion in primary motor cortex yields robust deficits in all forelimb function parameters measured with this method. The isometric pull task is a significant advance in operant conditioning systems designed to automate the measurement of multiple facets of forelimb function and assess deficits in rodent models of brain damage and motor dysfunction.

Frequency discrimination in rats measured with tone-step stimuli and discrete pure tones.

Two modified go/no-go tasks are compared for the measurement of frequency discrimination in albino rats. The first task required detection of an instantaneous, phase-matched frequency change, called a "tone-step," within a continuous reference tone. The more traditional second task required detection of a frequency change between repetitions of a reference sequence of repeating discrete tones. For each task frequency difference limens were measured over a range of reference frequencies from 2.31 to 27.7 kHz at 60 dB sound pressure level, with both upward and downward frequency shifts. All 24 subjects quickly learned the "tone-step" task to criterion, but only 13 could also learn the discrete tone task. Subjects' performance at either task generally improved with increasing reference frequency, and in both tasks upward frequency change thresholds were significantly higher than thresholds for downward changes. Overall mean Weber ratios were 1.73+/-0.27% for the "tone-step" task and 2.76+/-0.29% for the discrete tone task. However, subjects' performance on the "tone-step" task was not correlated with subsequent performance on the discrete tone task. We suggest that the lack of correspondence between tasks might be due to frequency discrimination processes interacting with short-term memory traces during inter-tone intervals in the discrete tone task.

Spatial and temporal distribution of odorant-evoked activity in the piriform cortex.

Despite a remarkably precise spatial representation of odorant stimuli in the early stages of olfactory processing, the projections to the olfactory (piriform) cortex are more diffuse and show characteristics of a combinatorial array, with extensive overlap of afferent inputs and widespread intracortical association connections. Furthermore, although there is increasing evidence for the importance of temporal structure in olfactory bulb odorant-evoked output, little is known about how this temporal patterning is translated within cortical neural ensembles. The present study used multichannel electrode arrays and paired single-unit recordings in rat anterior piriform cortex to test several predictions regarding ensemble coding in this system. The results indicate that odorants evoke activity in a spatially scattered ensemble of anterior piriform cortex neurons, and the ensemble activity includes a rich temporal structure. The most pronounced discrimination between different odorants by cortical ensembles occurs during the first inhalation of a 2 s stimulus. The distributed spatial and temporal structure of cortical activity is present at both global and local scales, with neighboring single units contributing to coding of different odorants and active at different phases of the respiratory cycle. Finally, cross-correlogram analyses suggest that cortical unit activity reflects not only afferent input from the olfactory bulb but also intrinsic activity within the intracortical association fiber system. These results provide direct evidence for predictions stemming from anatomical- and theoretical-based models of piriform cortex.