The experiments were carried out in accordance with the National Institute of Health Guide for the Olaparib datasheet Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and were approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of our institution. Animals submitted to the RCPR task were motivated to perform the task by food restriction throughout the experiment (Schaar et al., 2010). Each animal was left with approx. 16 mg of food (conventional feed) at every day before a daily task (see Section 5.6). Thus, the food restriction was daily

in the phases 1 and 2 (see Section 5.6) and at intervals of 3 days in the phase 3 (see Section 5.6). Animals had 2 months of age at the beginning of RCPR experiment (phase 1). Their weights were weekly measured until the second post-ischemic week, and there was an increase of 7–8% because of natural growth. However, no significant change of weight was observed after surgery, at least until second post-ischemic week. Phases 1 and 2 lasted about a month, and surgery was made when they were about 3 months old. For this reason, the animals not submitted to the RCPR task were submitted to surgery BAY 80-6946 clinical trial when they were 3 months old. No significant difference was observed in the weight of the day of the surgery between the four experimental groups (Table 1) (ANOVA, F=2.63, p=0.068). It shows that daily food restriction had no significant effect in weight changes until surgery. After surgery,

RCPR task Chlormezanone and its food restriction were made at intervals of 3 days, to avoid possible interference of food restriction/loss of weight in the results of the

functional analyzes. The ischemic lesion was induced by thermocoagulation of the blood in the submeningeal blood vessels of the motor and sensorimotor cortices as previously described (Giraldi-Guimarães et al., 2009 and Szele et al., 1995). Briefly, animals were anesthetized with ketamine hydrochloride (90 mg/kg, i.p.) and xylazine hydrochloride (10 mg/kg, i.p.) and placed in a stereotaxic apparatus (Insight Ltda., Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil). The skull was surgically exposed, and a craniotomy was performed, exposing the frontoparietal cortex contralateral to the preferred forelimb (see Section 5.5) (+2 to −6 mm A.P. from bregma; Paxinos and Watson, 2005). Blood was thermocoagulated transdurally by approximation of a hot probe to the dura mater, with care to avoid touching it. After procedure, skin was sutured, and animals were kept warm under a hot lamp and returned to colony room after recovery from anesthesia. To obtain BMMCs, bone marrow was harvested aseptically from tibias and femurs of naive donor rats as previously described (Giraldi-Guimarães et al., 2009). Briefly, bone marrow was extracted from the bones and collected in sterile tubes with serum-free DMEM-F12 (GIBCO BRL, Grand Island, NY, USA). Cells were mechanically dissociated, centrifuged and resuspended in serum-free DMEM-F12.