Laboratory of Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Plaza Feijoo, s/n, E-33003 Oviedo, Spain; Instituto de Neurociencias del Principado de Asturias (INEUROPA), Spain.
Laboratory of Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Plaza Feijoo, s/n, E-33003 Oviedo, Spain; Instituto de Neurociencias del Principado de Asturias (INEUROPA), Spain.
Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2018 Nov;155:30-41. doi: 10.1016/j.nlm.2018.06.007. Epub 2018 Jun 15.
Subjects' early life events will affect them later in life. When these events are stressful, such as child abuse in humans or repeated maternal separation in rodents, subjects can show some behavioral and brain alterations. This study used young adult female Wistar rats that were maternally raised (AFR), maternally separated from post-natal day (PND) 1 to PND10 (MS10), or maternally separated from PND1 to PND21 (MS21), in order to assess the effects of maternal separation (MS) on spatial learning and memory, as well as cognitive flexibility, using the Morris Water Maze (MWM). We performed quantitative cytochrome oxidase (COx) histochemistry on selected brain areas in order to identify whether maternal separation affects brain energy metabolism. We also performed c-Fos immunohistochemistry on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), thalamus, and hippocampus to explore whether this immediate early gene activity was altered in stressed subjects. We obtained a similar spatial learning pattern in maternally raised and maternally separated subjects on the reference memory task, but only the controls were flexible enough to solve the reversal learning successfully. Separated groups showed less c-Fos activity in the mPFC and less complex neural networks on COx.
个体早期的生活事件会对其以后的生活产生影响。当这些事件具有压力性时，比如人类中的虐待儿童或啮齿动物中的反复母体分离，个体可能会表现出一些行为和大脑的改变。本研究使用年轻成年雌性 Wistar 大鼠，它们在母体内成长（AFR），从产后第 1 天到第 10 天（MS10）或从第 1 天到第 21 天（MS21）与母体分离，以便使用 Morris 水迷宫（MWM）评估母体分离（MS）对空间学习和记忆以及认知灵活性的影响。我们对选定的大脑区域进行了定量细胞色素氧化酶（COx）组织化学染色，以确定母体分离是否会影响大脑的能量代谢。我们还对内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）、丘脑和海马体进行了 c-Fos 免疫组织化学染色，以探索应激个体的这种即时早期基因活性是否发生改变。我们在参照记忆任务中获得了类似的空间学习模式，但是只有对照组能够灵活地成功解决反转学习。分离组在 mPFC 中的 c-Fos 活性较低，COx 中的神经网络较不复杂。
