The Effects of Good Limb Training on the Corpus Callosum in C57BL/6 Mice

Previous research on rehabilitative strategies after stroke indicates that recovery strategies can promote long-term recovery of the impaired limb, whereas compensatory strategies produce detrimental effects on the impaired limb. In the present study, mice were separated into three groups: mice that received good limb training, mice that received bad limb training, and mice that received no training after stroke. The pasta matrix reaching task was used for training and to assess bad limb impairment. The present study investigated two hypotheses. First, we hypothesized that the mice receiving good limb training would show less functional recovery than the mice receiving either bad limb training or no training. Using an anterograde tract tracer (BDA), we also investigated the effects of good limb training recovery on the anatomical connections between hemispheres. As a result, our second hypothesis was that trainging the good limb during rehabilitation results in aberrant connectivity with fewer crossing fiber projections in the corpus callosum. The behavioral performance seen in previous literature was replicated in the present study. Furthermore, our results indicate there were no significant differences between the good limb and bad limb group in the number of cross-cortical fibers in the corpus callosum. Analyses of alternative brain regions are currently underway.