Fig. 1.

Schematic diagram of an enriched environment and its effects on neural plasticity. (A) Standard environment. This environment represents a standard housing condition that 3 rats are housed in a standard laboratory cage. (B) Enriched environment. A large group of rats are housed in a large cage furnished with a variety of play objects. Enriched environment housing after experimental stroke leads to increases in dendritic branching and dendritic spine generation (Johansson and Belichenko, 2002).