Anatomical, physiological, and behavioral effects of neonatal sensorimotor cortex ablation in the rat

摘要: Abstract Rats receiving one-stage bilateral lesions of the sensorimotor cortex or sham operations at 2 days age were tested maturity for ability to master a series tactile discriminations. A significant lesion effect appeared, and performance was found be highly correlated with locus extent damage. The latter evaluated by (a) surface configuration lesion, (b) electrophysiological identification units still responsive peripheral somatic stimulation, (c) an analysis remaining “barrels” in SmI cortex, (d) integrity ventrobasal thalamus. In addition, learning directly related number deficits on neurological tests (e.g., hopping, grip strength), although rats performed reasonably well most items this battery. When all infants compared made adulthood, former appeared less debilitated. After infant-operated sizable fragments target tissue removed from analysis, however, thus making ablations young old groups more comparable, equally impaired. These data fail show enhanced recovery discriminative function after relatively complete infancy. results further suggest that learning, when observed animals, mediated spared afferent system whose cortical components continued develop normally incomplete neonatal ablation. It is suggested infant-ablated may better able use than matched adult ablated small fraction spared.