Evaluation of memory dysfunction following experimental brain injury using the Morris water maze

Memory dysfunction, a common clinical feature of traumatic brain injury (TBI), is thought to be related to secondary damage of key anatomic structures in the brain, including the hippocampus. In the present study, we have characterized and evaluated a novel experimental paradigm using the Morris water maze (MWM) technique, to measure post-TBI memory retention after lateral (parasagittal) fluid percussion (FP) brain injury in rats. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 37) received a total of 20 training trials over 2 days in the MWM. Two and a half hours after the last training trial, the animals received FP brain injury of moderate severity (2.3 atmospheres, n = 12), high severity (2.6 atm, n = 13), or no injury (n = 12). Forty-two hours after FP brain injury, we observed a highly sufficient memory dysfunction in animals from both injury groups compared to the uninjured group (p less than 0.001). The degree of memory dysfunction was found to be directly related to the severity of injury, with the high severity group scoring significantly worse than the moderately injured group (p = 0.15). In addition, hippocampal cell loss was observed after brain injury, but only unilaterally. These data suggest that lateral FP brain injury causes memory dysfunction possibly related to concurrent hippocampal cell loss and that posttraumatic memory deficits may be sensitively quantitated using the memory testing paradigm described.