Anna-Sophia Wahl finds predictors for cognitive outcome after strokes

More than 70 % of stroke survivors develop forms of cognitive decline, yet the corresponding mechanisms are poorly understood, and specific treatment options are therefore unavailable. A team of researchers led by Branco Weiss Alumna Anna-Sophia Wahl have uncovered the role of place cells, and how a functional subclass of them are predictors of cognitive outcome after stroke.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers present a new experimental paradigm that allows revealing the role of individual nerve cells within a neuronal population involved in spatial memory in health and disease – so called place cells. The team was able to measure the loss of spatial memory and mimic key features of small vessel disease using chronic 2-photon calcium imaging in the hippocampus in mice. The animals were trained to perform a cognitive task in a virtual reality environment before and after brain-wide microstrokes during the recordings. This approach allowed the researchers to track the fate of individual nerve cells in the hippocampus for several weeks before and after strokes. They found that the survival of place cells with stable coding for spatial information can be a strong predictor of positive cognitive outcomes following a stroke. The synchronous activity of place cells helped the mice survive and re-stabilize the rewiring network after a stroke. These findings may be used for the development of novel pharmacological and stimulation strategies:

Read the paper in Nature Communications

Read a summary on the SyNergy website