Male mice are particularly vulnerable to cognitive impairment following mild traumatic brain injury

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) result from impact to or rapid displacement of the brain and can lead to various neurological deficits involving working memory, decision making, and anxiety. While large-scale effects of brain damage are well-described for more severe TBIs, less is known about the extent and duration of cognitive deficits at the mild level. Interval timing can provide a helpful window into cognition in mice and humans. Interval-timing behavior is impaired in a wide range of neuropsychiatric disease states, but less is known about whether it is impaired by mild TBI (mTBI). Furthermore, novel object recognition and the Barnes maze tests are valuable assays for evaluating spatial learning, working memory, and anxietylike behavior in mice. Here, we employed a weight-drop model of mTBI to investigate cognitive and behavioral changes resulting from mTBI treatment. mTBI mice were not consistently impaired in either interval timing or novel object recognition, but they demonstrated impaired spatial memory in the Barnes maze. Interestingly, between-sex comparisons revealed impairments in male mTBI mice in the interval-timing task, suggesting that male and female mice may be differently affected by mTBIs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).