LAUSR

Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) cause neurophysiological and neurodegenerative dysfunctions. One aspect that is of interest to model in the laboratory and worthy of further exploration is TBI-induced memory impairment. To investigate the impact of TBI on the behavior and memory of Gromphadorhina portentosa (Giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroach) a close-head mechanical device was utilized at a range of 20°- 30° to induce head injury. Here preliminary data for 25° is shown because it yielded the lowest mortality rate. We conducted behavior tests to examine locomotion and motivation; the former showed that head injuries resulted in a limited range of movements and ataxia, while the latter showed that brain trauma was consistent with delayed or lack of preference behavior. Ongoing work suggests that traumatic brain injury decreases memory compared to the control. The behavior work is further supported by neurochemistry results that show alterations in glucose metabolism correlating with the TBI. Our data indicates that G. portentosa is a compelling model for studying TBI. Future work will explore mechanisms and treatments for TBI using cockroaches. APU This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.