Endogenous dopamine transmission is crucial for motor skill recovery after stroke

Ischemic stroke frequently causes motor impairments. Despite exercise can improve motor outcomes, many stroke survivors remain life-long disabled. Understanding the mechanisms associated with motor recovery after a stroke is necessary to develop treatments. Here, we show that endogenous DA transmission is required for optimal motor skill recovery following photothrombotic stroke in rats. Blockade of dopamine D1 and D2 receptors impaired the recovery of a forelimb reaching task and decreased the rats’ motivation to complete full training sessions. Our data indicate that dopamine transmission is important to drive motor rehabilitation after stroke through motivational aspects and ultimately suggest that augmented motivation and reward feedback could be an interesting strategy to increase the effectiveness or rehabilitation.