Fig. 1.

Schedule of surgeries and testing. The animals received injections of the viral vectors 4 weeks before the 6-OHDA lesion (−4). Beginning 3 weeks after the vector injection, the animals were tested for forelimb akinesia using the stepping test (pre step), followed by spontaneous motor asymmetry (spon. rot.) andd-amphetamine-induced motor asymmetry (pre amph I–II). 6-OHDA was injected into four sites in the striatum at a dose of 7 μg per site at week 0. Post-lesion motor impairment was evaluated using repeated drug-induced (amph I–VI, apoI–II, and SKF-82958I–II; shown above the time line) and spontaneous tests (step I–V,cylinder and staircase tests; below the time line). The animals were perfused for immunohistochemical analysis at 24 weeks after lesion, as described in Materials and Methods.