A simple rat model of mild traumatic brain injury: device to reproduce anatomical and neurological changes of mild traumatic brain injury
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Neuroscience, Neurology
- Keywords
- Concussion, Rat, Device, Methodology
- Copyright
- © 2016 Kim et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. A simple rat model of mild traumatic brain injury: device to reproduce anatomical and neurological changes of mild traumatic brain injury. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2037v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2037v1
Abstract
Mild traumatic brain injury typically involves temporary impairment of neurological function. Previous studies used the water pressure or rotational injury for designing the device to make a rat mild traumatic brain injury model. The objective of this study was to make a simple model of mild traumatic brain injury in rat. The device consisted of a free-fall impactor that was targeted onto the rat skull. The weight (175g) was freely dropped 30cm to rat’s skull bregma. We installed a safety device made of acrylic panel. To confirm a mild traumatic brain injury in 36 Sprague–Dawley rats, we performed the brain magnetic resonance image(MRI) within 24 hours after injury. We evaluated behavior and chemical changes in rats before and after mild traumatic brain injury. The brain MRI did not show high or low signal intensity in 34 rats. The mobility on grid floor was decreased after mild traumatic brain injury. Absolute number of foot-fault and foot-fault ratio were decreased after mild traumatic brain. But the difference of ratio was lesser than absolute number of foot-fault. These results show that the device is capable of reproducing mild traumatic brain injury in rat. Our device can reduce the potential to cause brain hemorrhage and reflect the mechanism of real mild traumatic brain injury compared with existing methods and behaviors. This model can be useful in exploring physiology and management of mild traumatic brain injury.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Rat concussion model
Rat concussion model - behavior, laboratory
Figure 1
Device for mild traumatic brain injury using a rat as subject. The components of the devices are a vertical guide tube for the dropped weight and an acryl panel to absorb impact.
Figure 2
Finding of magnetic resonance imaging after mild traumatic brain injury. There were no significant cerebral hemorrhage, intracranial hemorrhage, and diffuse axonal injury.
Figure 3
Movement latency on metal grid was delayed after mild traumatic brain injury (p<0.05). The latency of pre-MTBI was 0.94 ± 1.41 second, but the latency of post-MTBI was 5.26 ± 11.39 second.
