.................................................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 4 Risk factors .......................................................................................................................................... 4 The inflammation hypothesis .............................................................................................................. 4 Inflammation in cardiac surgery vs. non-cardiac surgery ................................................................... 5 Materials and Methods ........................................................................................................................... 6 Animals ................................................................................................................................................ 6 Design .................................................................................................................................................. 6 Surgery................................................................................................................................................. 6 Blood Sampling .................................................................................................................................... 6 Sucrose Preference .............................................................................................................................. 7 Open field ............................................................................................................................................ 7 Novel Object and Location Recognition .............................................................................................. 7 Morris Water Maze ............................................................................................................................. 8 Sacrifice ............................................................................................................................................... 8 Immunohistochemistry ....................................................................................................................... 8 Data Analysis ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Results ................................................................................................................................................... 10 Body Weight ...................................................................................................................................... 10 Sucrose Preference ............................................................................................................................ 10 Open Field ......................................................................................................................................... 10 Novel Object and Location Recognition ............................................................................................ 10 Morris Water Maze ........................................................................................................................... 11 DCX staining ....................................................................................................................................... 12 IBA-1 staining ..................................................................................................................................... 13 Conclusion and Discussion .................................................................................................................... 14 References ............................................................................................................................................. 16 Appendix A – staining DCX .................................................................................................................... 19 Appendix B – staining IBA-1 .................................................................................................................. 20 Appendix C – additional data ................................................................................................................ 21