Morphological and neuro-behavioral parallels in the rat model of stroke.

Middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) is widely used as a rat model of focal brain ischemia. Evaluation of brain damage often includes the morphological analysis of the injury area, MRI, and various scales which depend on functional tests, commonly known as neurological severity score (NSS). We determined the optimal number of NSS tests and assessed their capacity for non-invasive evaluation of brain ischemic injury in the rat MCAO model.