ACUTE ETHANOL ADMINISTRATION REDUCES THE COGNITIVE DEFICITS ASSOCIATED WITH TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY IN RATS

The present study was designed to determine whether a low dose of acut e ethanol administration could attenuate cognitive deficits associated with traumatic brain injury. Adult male rats received oral administra tion of ethanol or drinking water 2 h prior to surgery to produce a bl ood ethanol concentration of 100 mg% and then received bilateral contu sion injuries of the medial prefrontal cortex, Seven days after surger y, the rats began 10 days of testing for acquisition of spatial locali zation in the Morris water maze where they were required to find a hid den platform to escape from the water, The results indicate that the r ats given ethanol at the time of injury later spent significantly less time searching for the hidden platform than their water-treated count erparts, On a memory probe test given on the final day of testing, in which the platform was removed from the pool, rats given the ethanol s pent more time in the area where the platform had been located indicat ing that they learned its location better than the lesion/water contro ls, In addition, acute ethanol treatment reduced some of the histopath ology that typically occurs following severe contusion of the medial f rontal cortex but did not attenuate post-traumatic formation of edema, These results indicate that acute ethanol intoxication can reduce the severity of cognitive impairments caused by contusive traumatic brain injury and support the contention that there is a dose-response relat ionship of acute ethanol intoxication in the setting of traumatic brai n injury.