Morphological and Functional Adaptation of Basal Ganglia Neurons after Cerebral Ischemia

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the morphological and functional adaptation of basal ganglia neurons after cerebral ischemia. A series of neurological and behavioral impairments have been associated with brain injury that follows spontaneous or experimental cerebral ischemia. In 1979, a procedure—the 4-vessel occlusion method—of transient forebrain ischemia in the rat was proposed as a model of cardiac arrest. Reproducible focal neuronal damage in the dorsolateral part of the striatum as well as in various tele-diencephalic areas was obtained with this method. Recently, another reliable method for the induction of striatal ischemic damage in rats was obtained by local injection of endothelin-1 (ET-1), a potent vasoconstrictor agent. The hypoxicischemic damage induced by these procedures differently affects the various cell populations of the brain, in particular neurons. The chapter summarizes some of the results obtained by studying morphological and functional recovery after ischemic striatal injury induced by the 4-vessel occlusion or ET-1 intrastriatal injection in the rat.