well, neuroinflammation comes in may flavours and it depends on what you really want to study. systemic administration of lipopolysaccaride from bacterial sources causes a strong inflammatory response through the body, including blood-brain barrier leakage and among others, triggers microglia activation and infiltration of immune cells into the brain (see for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23468966). otherwise, you have to go for specific disease models (EAE for myelin, coriomeningitic virus for encephalitis, anyone for neurodegeneration....). good luck...
I was happy to see your post. I am designing an in vivo model using the rat for Lyme neuroborreliosis. I think I should use the Adult male Sprague–Dawley rats (250 and 300 g). Do you think any other rat species would be better?