Rehabilitative Experience Interacts With FGF-2 to Facilitate Functional Improvement After Motor Cortex Injury

This experiment compared the effects of a structured rehabilitation regime (skilled reaching for 5 mo) and more varied training (complex environment for 5 mo) with and without postlesion infusion of FGF-2 for 7 days in rats having unilateral motor cortex lesions. Animals were tested on a motor battery throughout the five-month recovery period. The structured rehabilitation alone was ineffective in improving function whereas complex housing did improve performance on several measures. FGF-2 alone was ineffective but in combination with either the rehabilitation training or complex housing it did provide functional benefit. The combination of complex housing and FGF-2 was most effective as all motor measures showed significant improvement. Golgi analysis of layer III cortical pyramidal neurons showed that the complex housing essentially reversed the dendritic loss in the lesion animals. Curiously, there was no effect of FGF-2 on the cells measured, even though there was a beneficial effect of the combined FGF-2 and complex housing. It appears that varied rehabilitative programs, in combination with factors that promote neuronal plasticity are far more beneficial than similar training alone.