Research reportFunctional assessment of sensory functions after photothrombotic stroke in the barrel field of mice

•We assessed sensorimotor functions in mice after focal stroke within barrel cortex.•Motor functions were unaffected.•Behavioural tests revealed sensory deficits of variable duration and intensity.•Basic vibrissal sensation was spared with strong and impaired with weaker stimuli.•Cognitive impairments were detectable with sensory labyrinth test.

Motor, sensory and cognitive deficits are common impairments observed in human stroke as well as in animal stroke models. Using a battery of behavioural tests we assessed sensorimotor deficits after photothrombotic stroke localized within or beyond cortical representation of mouse sensory vibrissae. We found restricted, modality specific behavioural consequences in the acute post-stroke period. Among incorporated tests, adhesive removal test, novelty exploration test and sensory labyrinth task were sensitive to the somatosensory cortical deficits. Injured animals explored new objects significantly longer, they also needed distinctly more time to contact and to remove the adhesive tape placed on whiskers contralateral to the infarct. Moreover, we observed that after stroke animals were unable to solve the sensory labyrinth depending only upon tactile sensation from whiskers with injured cortical representation. Spontaneous recovery could be observed within the first post-stroke week for adhesive tape removal and within 14 days for labyrinth performance. However, for the novel object exploration we did not observed the recovery for the period of 18 days after stroke. Moreover, new object exploration test performance differed between the somatosensory and visual cortical impairments. We suggest that those three tests might be valuable in assessing the usefulness of therapies designed to support brain repair after experimental stroke.