Fig. 1

Novel Object Recognition (NOR) testing of animals used in this study. Blast-exposed (n = 12) and control (n = 12) rats from cohort 2 in [64] were tested in a NOR task 41 weeks post-blast exposure. Shown is total exploration time (s) during the training session and time spent exploring the novel object during short-term memory (STM, 1 h after training) and long-term memory (LTM, 24 h after training) testing. 5 control and 4 blast-exposed rats from the above cohort 2 were perfused at 13 months after blast exposure with the Brite Vu Special Projects contrast agent. Quantitative analysis of 9 vascular parameters derived from the micro CT scans of these rats were previously presented [31]. Animals indicated in color were used to illustrate additional aspects of the vascular pathology presented in this study. Blast-exposed animals: blue square, Figs. 2 and 19; orange square, Figs. 3–4; red square, Figs. 5–13 and 14c; green square, Figs. 16–18. Controls: black circle, Figs. 9e and 14c (synaptophysin); purple circle, Fig. 14c (PSD95 and spinophilin)