Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is the most prevalent of all head injuries. Microglia play an essential role in homeostasis and diseases of the central nervous system. We hypothesize that microglia may play a beneficial or detrimental role in TBI depending on their state of activation and duration.

In this study, we evaluated whether TBI results in a spatiotemporal change in microglia phenotype and whether it affects sensory-motor or learning and memory functions in male C57BL/6 mice. We used a panel of neurological and behavioral tests and a multi-color flow cytometry-based data analysis followed by unsupervised clustering to evaluate isolated microglia from injured brain tissue. We characterized several microglial phenotypes and their association with cognitive deficits. TBI results in a spatiotemporal increase in activated microglia that correlated negatively with spatial learning and memory at 35 days post-injury. These observations could define therapeutic windows and accelerate translational research to improve patient outcomes.

外伤性脑损伤 (TBI) 是所有头部损伤中最常见的。小胶质细胞在中枢神经系统的稳态和疾病中发挥着重要作用。我们假设小胶质细胞可能在 TBI 中发挥有益或有害的作用，这取决于它们的激活状态和持续时间。

在这项研究中，我们评估了 TBI 是否导致小胶质细胞表型的时空变化，以及它是否影响雄性 C57BL/6 小鼠的感觉运动或学习和记忆功能。我们使用了一组神经学和行为测试以及基于多色流式细胞术的数据分析，然后进行无监督聚类来评估来自受伤脑组织的孤立小胶质细胞。我们描述了几种小胶质细胞表型及其与认知缺陷的关联。TBI 导致活化小胶质细胞的时空增加，这与受伤后 35 天的空间学习和记忆呈负相关。这些观察结果可以定义治疗窗口并加速转化研究，以改善患者的治疗效果。