Traumatic brain injury in mice lacking the K channel, TREK-1.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the potassium channel, TREK-1, was neuroprotective after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Since there are no selective blockers, we used TREK-1 knockout (KO) mice for our study. Wild-type (WT) and TREK-1 KO mice were anesthetized and subjected to controlled-cortical impact injury (deformation of the brain by 1.