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Cognitive impairment is a common outcome of ischemic stroke. Our previous work has shown that an experimental stroke in the cortex reduces activity in remote hippocampal layers in rats. This study seeks to uncover the underlying functional connections between these areas by analyzing changes to oscillatory activity, signal power, and communication. We induced an ischemic stroke in the left somatosensory cortex of rats and used linear micro-electrode arrays to simultaneously record from cortex and hippocampus under urethane anesthesia at two weeks and one month after stroke. We found significant increase in signal power, as well as an increase in the number of brain state changes in response to stroke. Our results suggest that the cortex modulates the activity and stability of hippocampal oscillations, which is disrupted following cortical stroke that can lead to cognitive impairment.

Ischemic stroke is a major cause of disability among adults worldwide. Despite its prevalence, few effective treatment options exist to alleviate sensory and motor dysfunctions that result from stroke. In the past, rodent models of stroke have been the primary experimental models used to develop stroke therapies. However, positive results in these studies have failed to replicate in human clinical trials, highlighting the importance of nonhuman primate (NHP) models as a preclinical step. Although there are a few NHP models of stroke, the extent of tissue damage is highly variable and dependent on surgical skill. In this study, we employed the photothrombotic stroke model in NHPs to generate controlled, reproducible ischemic lesions. Originally developed in rodents, the photothrombotic technique consists of intravenous injection of a photosensitive dye such as Rose Bengal followed by illumination of an area of interest to induce endothelial damage resulting in the formation of thrombi in the illuminated vasculature. We developed a quantitative model to predict the extent of tissue damage based on the light scattering profile of light in the cortex of NHPs. We then employed this technique in the sensorimotor cortex of two adult male Rhesus Macaques. In vivo optical coherence tomography imaging of the cortical microvasculature and subsequent histology confirmed the formation of focal cortical infarcts and demonstrated its reproducibility and ability to control the sizes and locations of light-induced ischemic lesions in the cortex of NHPs. This model has the potential to enhance our understanding of perilesional neural dynamics and can be used to develop reliable neurorehabilitative therapeutic strategies to treat stroke.

Advances in neurotechnology have been integral to the investigation of neural circuit function in systems neuroscience. Recent improvements in high performance fluorescent sensors and scientific CMOS cameras enables optical imaging of neural networks at a much larger scale. While exciting technical advances demonstrate the potential of this technique, further improvement in data acquisition and analysis, especially those that allow effective processing of increasingly larger datasets, would greatly promote the application of optical imaging in systems neuroscience. Here we demonstrate the ability of wide-field imaging to capture the concurrent dynamic activity from hundreds to thousands of neurons over millimeters of brain tissue in behaving mice. This system allows the visualization of morphological details at a higher spatial resolution than has been previously achieved using similar functional imaging modalities. To analyze the expansive data sets, we developed software to facilitate rapid downstream data processing. Using this system, we show that a large fraction of anatomically distinct hippocampal neurons respond to discrete environmental stimuli associated with classical conditioning and that the observed temporal dynamics of transient calcium signals are sufficient for exploring certain spatiotemporal features of large neural networks.