Asymmetrical behavior in rats following striatal lesions and fetal transplants: the elevated body swing test

Animals with unilateral neurotoxic lesions in the striatum exhibit a stereotypical biased rotational behavior in response to dopamine agonists. We recently argued that the rotational test may be subject to sensitization effects of the drug. Accordingly, we proposed the drug-free elevated body swing test (EBST) as an alternative behavioral index of motor asymmetry in striatal lesioned animals. EBST involves elevating the animal from the ground by holding its tail and simply recording the number of swings to either side made by the animal over 30 s. We previously reported that Sprague-Dawley, male 8-week-old rats, intrastriatally lesioned with 500 nanomoles of 3-nitropropionic acid or 225 nanomoles of quinolinic acid, exhibit biased swing activity at 7, 14, 21 and 28 days post-lesion. In the present study, we extended the efficacy of the EBST in measuring the recovery of motor function following fetal striatal transplants. At 2 months post-lesion, lesioned animals which show 70% or higher biased swing activity were transplanted with rat fetal striatal lateral eminence (16-day-old gestational age). When tested in the EBST at 1 and 3 months post-transplant, these transplanted animals displayed normalization of the biased swing activity. In contrast, animals transplanted with medium alone continued to exhibit a biased swing activity. The present study thus extends our previous EBST data to include successful behavioral characterization by EBST of recovery of motor function in lesioned animals receiving fetal transplants.