O comportamento em campo aberto como modelo para avaliar a recuperação funcional após lesão unilateral dos barris do córtex somatossensorial

Abstract

In rodents, the vibrissae are tactile detectors that have an important role in the spatial exploration of the environment and in texture discrimination. In the somatosensory cortex, the receptive fields of each of the vibrissae are organized into discrete columns, known as barrels, in the contralateral hemisphere. The unilateral lesions of the barrels results in an asymmetric behavior characterized by the reduction in the use of the vibrissae contralateral to the lesion during the exploration of the environment. This asymmetry progressively diminishes as the animal is repeatedly tested in the same environment. In rats, this behavior, usually assessed by the number of times the animals touch the walls of an open field arena with their vibrissae, has been considered a useful tool in studies addressing plasticity and functional recovery after cortical lesions. However, in mice with unilateral lesions of the barrels, the analysis of the number of times that the vibrissae touch the walls have lead to contradictory results. The present work aims to establish a behavioral model for the evaluation of functional recovery after unilateral lesions of the barrel field located in the somatosensory cortex of the mouse. To that end, the direction of movement near the corners of the open field of Swiss male mice subjected to unilateral cryolesion of the barrel was analyzed in three independent studies. In the first study, we demonstrated that the cryolesioned animals displayed a predominance of contralateral movements in the first time that they were tested in the open field and that this result was present whether the animals was first tested one or nine days after the lesion. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the predominance of movements toward the contralateral side of the lesion diminished as the animals were repeatedly tested in the open field. In the second study, we demonstrated that the cryolesioned animals that were, prior to barrel field lesioning, subjected to five sessions in the open field did not display, after lesioning, differences between the number of ipso and contralateral movements. In the third study, we demonstrated that the cryolesioned animals that were not previously tested in the open field displayed a predominance of contralateral movements even if the first test was carried out forty eight days after the unilateral lesion of the barrels. Our data suggest that the analysis of the direction of movement near the corners of the open field can be an important tool in the assessment of functional recovery after unilateral lesions of the barrels located in the somatosensory cortex of mice. Moreover, in order to properly assess functional recovery after unilateral lesion of the barrel field without the confounding factor of habituation, animals must be tested only once