Fig. 6: TBI results in neurobehavioral deficits.

Finally, the same cohort of mice used in Fig. 5, were challenged by a battery of behavioral tests after MRI and longitudinally compared up to day 28 post-TBI (A-E). Mice showed lower grip strength (A) on hanging wire and motor incoordination on stationary beam (B) at day 5 post-injury. (A) TBI mice showed lower scores and less ability to climb on the wire than naïve (baseline) scores. (B) These TBI mice took more time to cross a narrow beam and had higher number of slips than naïve ones. Further, these TBI mice were unable to hold on to an accelerating rotarod and fell off earlier. These mice showed persistent motor impairment on rotarod up to day 28 post-injury (C). At day 28, these mice were further tested for anxiety in open field (D) and for novel object recognition ability (E). Data from open field and novel object recognition test were analyzed by Anymaze software. (D) TBI mice spent more time at the periphery than naïve mice with a lower frequency of visits to the center area, and exhibited higher anxiety than naïve mice. Injured mice also showed reduced preference to explore the novel object, discrimination differences in time spent and number of visits were not observed as significant (E). Groups were compared by Two-Way ANOVA analysis with Tukey’s post-hoc comparison. Results were calculated as mean ± SEM (n=6). ns= not significant; *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001; ****p<0.0001 vs. naive.