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High-Impact, Self-Motivated Training Within an Enriched Environment With Single Animal Tracking Dose-Dependently Promotes Motor Skill Acquisition and Functional Recovery
- Source :
- Neurorehabilitation and neural repair
- Publication Year :
- 2014
-
Abstract
- Functional recovery following central nervous system injuries is strongly influenced by rehabilitative training. In the clinical setting, the intensity of training and the level of motivation for a particular task are known to play important roles. With increasing neuroscience studies investigating the effects of training and rehabilitation, it is important to understand how the amount and type of training of individuals influences outcome. However, little is known about the influence of spontaneous “self-training” during daily life as it is often uncontrolled, not recorded, and mostly disregarded. Here, we investigated the effects of the intensity of self-training on motor skill acquisition in normal, intact rats and on the recovery of functional motor behavior following spinal cord injury in adult rats. We used a custom-designed small animal tracking system, “RatTrack,” to continuously record the activity of multiple rats, simultaneously in a complex Natural Habitat–enriched environment. Naïve, adult rats performed high-intensity, self-motivated motor training, which resulted in them out-performing rats that were conventionally housed and trained on skilled movement tasks, for example, skilled prehension (grasping) and ladder walking. Following spinal cord injury the amount of self-training was correlated with improved functional recovery. These data suggest that high-impact, self-motivated training leads to superior skill acquisition and functional recovery than conventional training paradigms. These findings have important implications for the design of animal studies investigating rehabilitation and for the planning of human rehabilitation programs.
- Subjects :
- medicine.medical_specialty
medicine.medical_treatment
Central nervous system
education
610 Medicine & health
Motor Activity
Task (project management)
Dreyfus model of skill acquisition
Physical medicine and rehabilitation
medicine
Animals
Rats, Long-Evans
Spinal cord injury
Spinal Cord Injuries
Environmental enrichment
Rehabilitation
Behavior, Animal
Training (meteorology)
Recovery of Function
General Medicine
medicine.disease
Rats
Disease Models, Animal
2742 Rehabilitation
2728 Neurology (clinical)
medicine.anatomical_structure
Motor Skills
2808 Neurology
Female
10046 Balgrist University Hospital, Swiss Spinal Cord Injury Center
Animal studies
Psychology
Subjects
Details
- Volume :
- 28
- Issue :
- 6
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Neurorehabilitation and neural repair
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....b15c1a8c486e689e6be1deacfe5f4ac4
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1545968314520721