Standard staining with hematoxylin and eosin

In sections stained with hematoxylin and eosin, the extent of cortical damage was identified by classifying ischemic injury in the ischemic middle cerebral artery territory as selective necrosis, incomplete infarction or pannecrosis as described in previous studies [5, 16]. In addition, a score for brain injury was determined [7] by dividing the cortex into 4 regions of interest and a score was assigned to each region graded as: 0 for normal, 1 for <10 % of cellular injury, 2 for 10–50 % of cellular injury, 3 for >50 % cellular injury and, 4 for confluent areas of pannecrosis. A cumulative score was obtained by summing the scores for each region.