Recovery of function after brain damage: facilitation by the calcium entry blocker nimodipine.

Large neocortical injuries can interfere with the initial performance of many previously learned behaviors. This dysfunction, however, may not be attributable to the loss of the memories of learned behaviors but to a failure to access memories that are spared. The results of this experiment support this hypothesis by demonstrating that the calcium entry blocker nimodipine, which prevents trauma-induced retrograde amnesia in a 1-trial passive learning situation, will also facilitate the recovery of pre-operatively learned brightness discrimination in rats with visual neocortical injuries.