Perinatal stroke: modelling and the potential of neurovisualization

Abstract

Perinatal stroke (PS), characterized by sudden disappearance or impairment of brain functions, is a socially significant form of pathology that leads to the death and/or disability of children. Depending on the extent of the lesion, the severity of the consequences of a PS varies from a slight lag in learning to lifelong disability and inability to independently take care of yourself. The most common complications are cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Since the possibilities of diagnosis and therapy in the acute period are extremely limited, the efforts of health care providers and scientists are aimed at improving approaches to the rehabilitation of such patients. The authors presented an overview of modern methods of modelling PS in various experimental conditions. It is established that the modelling of PS is continuously being improved, new ways of forming ischemic brain damage are being created, each of which is necessary for the development of new scientific criteria for its early diagnosis and prediction of outcomes in standardized conditions. It is shown that a special place in the diagnosis of ischemic brain damage is occupied by wide-field optical visualization, which allows determining the formation of neural networks and functional maps of the cortex of the developing brain, provides an opportunity to analyze the spatiotemporal activity of neurons in large areas of the cerebral cortex and the processes of restoring cortical functions in the post-traumatic period. With the advent of genetically encoded ion sensor proteins and technologies for obtaining transgenic animal lines that specifically express sensors directly in neurons, opportunities have been created for optical registration of neural activity by analyzing changes in spontaneous activity of calcium signals and other mechanisms, which allows us to study brain neuroplasticity at a new level and create new ways to correct ischemic brain damage.