Optimal level activity of matrix metalloproteinases is critical for adult visual plasticity in the healthy and stroke-affected brain
- University of Göttingen, Germany
- German Primate Center, Germany
Abstract
The ability of the adult brain to undergo plastic changes is of particular interest in medicine, especially regarding recovery from injuries or improving learning and cognition. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) have been associated with juvenile experience-dependent primary visual cortex (V1) plasticity, yet little is known about their role in this process in the adult V1. Activation of MMPs is a crucial step facilitating structural changes in a healthy brain; however, upon brain injury, upregulated MMPs promote the spread of a lesion and impair recovery. To clarify these seemingly opposing outcomes of MMPs-activation, we examined the effects of MMPs-inhibition on experience-induced plasticity in healthy and stoke-affected adult mice. In healthy animals, 7-day application of MMPs-inhibitor prevented visual plasticity. Additionally, treatment with MMPs-inhibitor once but not twice following stroke rescued plasticity, normally lost under these conditions. Our data imply that a fine balance of MMPs-activity is crucial for adult visual plasticity to occur.
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Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experimental procedures were approved by the local government (Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit, registration number 33.9-42502-04-10/0326). All surgeries were performed under isoflurane or halothane anesthesia and every effort was made to minimize suffering.
Copyright
© 2015, Pielecka-Fortuna et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Optimal level activity of matrix metalloproteinases is critical for adult visual plasticity in the healthy and stroke-affected brain
eLife 4:e11290.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11290
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Locomotion is controlled by spinal circuits that interact with supraspinal drives and sensory feedback from the limbs. These sensorimotor interactions are disrupted following spinal cord injury. The thoracic lateral hemisection represents an experimental model of an incomplete spinal cord injury, where connections between the brain and spinal cord are abolished on one side of the cord. To investigate the effects of such an injury on the operation of the spinal locomotor network, we used our computational model of cat locomotion recently published in eLife (Rybak et al., 2024) to investigate and predict changes in cycle and phase durations following a thoracic lateral hemisection during treadmill locomotion in tied-belt (equal left-right speeds) and split-belt (unequal left-right speeds) conditions. In our simulations, the ‘hemisection’ was always applied to the right side. Based on our model, we hypothesized that following hemisection the contralesional (‘intact’, left) side of the spinal network is mostly controlled by supraspinal drives, whereas the ipsilesional (‘hemisected’, right) side is mostly controlled by somatosensory feedback. We then compared the simulated results with those obtained during experiments in adult cats before and after a mid-thoracic lateral hemisection on the right side in the same locomotor conditions. Our experimental results confirmed many effects of hemisection on cat locomotion predicted by our simulations. We show that having the ipsilesional hindlimb step on the slow belt, but not the fast belt, during split-belt locomotion substantially reduces the effects of lateral hemisection. The model provides explanations for changes in temporal characteristics of hindlimb locomotion following hemisection based on altered interactions between spinal circuits, supraspinal drives, and somatosensory feedback.
