title: Impaired executive function following ischemic stroke in the rat medial prefrontal cortex.
abstract: Small (lacunar) infarcts frequently arise in frontal and midline thalamic regions in the absence of major stroke. Damage to these areas often leads to impairment of executive function likely as a result of interrupting connections of the prefrontal cortex. Thus, patients experience frontal-like symptoms such as impaired ability to shift ongoing behavior and attention. In contrast, executive dysfunction has not been demonstrated in rodent models of stroke, thereby limiting the development of potential therapies for human executive dysfunction. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (n=40) underwent either sham surgery or bilateral endothelin-1 injections in the mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus or in the medial prefrontal cortex. Executive function was assessed using a rodent attention set shifting test that requires animals to shift attention to stimuli in different stimulus dimensions. Medial prefrontal cortex ischemia impaired attention shift performance between different stimulus dimensions while sparing stimulus discrimination and attention shifts within a stimulus dimension, indicating a selective attention set-shift deficit. Rats with mediodorsal thalamic lacunar damage did not exhibit a cognitive impairment relative to sham controls. The selective attention set shift impairment observed in this study is consistent with clinical data demonstrating selective executive disorders following stroke within specific sub-regions of frontal cortex. These data contribute to the development and validation of a preclinical animal model of executive dysfunction, that can be employed to identify potential therapies for ameliorating cognitive deficits following stroke.
authors.affiliation: Division of BioMedical Sciences, Memorial University, St. John's, NL, Canada; Heart and Stroke Foundation Centre for Stroke Recovery, Canada.
authors.forename: Chris A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Cordova
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jackson
authors.forename: Kristopher D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Langdon
authors.forename: Krista A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Hewlett
authors.forename: Dale
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Corbett
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D002545:Brain Ischemia / Q000139:chemically induced / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D019332:Endothelin-1; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012193:Reversal Learning / Q000502:physiology; D012718:Set, Psychology; D020521:Stroke / Q000139:chemically induced / Q000503:physiopathology*
chemical_list: D019332:Endothelin-1
keywords: Attention set-shifting; CD; ED; Executive function; ID; LI; MD; Mediodorsal thalamus; PFC; Prefrontal cortex; REV; Rat; SD; WCST; Wisconsin Card Sorting Test; compound discrimination; extradimensional shift; intradimensional shift; learned irrelevance; mediodorsal thalamus; prefrontal cortex; reversal; simple discrimination