Fig. 5.

Correlation of behavioral traits with blast-induced cerebrovascular lesions in rats exposed to repetitive low-level blast at 13 months post-exposure. Elevated zero maze (EZM, a–c) and fear conditioning (FC, d–f) testing was performed as part of the studies described in ref [99]. EZM testing was performed at 40 weeks post-blast exposure. Shown for EZM are a open arm entries, b time spent in the open arms and c latency to cross between two open arms. Labeled in color are results from selected rats whose cerebral vasculature is illustrated in Figs. 4 (Fig. 4c, blast-exposed, red square; Fig. 4f, control, aqua circle) and 8 (Fig. 8a, b, blast-exposed, green square). FC testing was performed 42 weeks post-blast. Results are shown for the d training phase, e contextual fear memory testing (assessed 24 h after training) and f cued fear memory testing (assessed another 24 h later). Results of selected blast-exposed rats (Figs. 4c, red and 8a, b, green), are compared to the mean ± standard error measurements of blast and control cohorts determined previously [99]. Statistically significant differences between blast-exposed and control cohorts are indicated (*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01, unpaired t tests) [99]