School of Natural Sciences and Medicine, Ilia State University, 3/5 K/Cholokashvili Avenue, 0162 Tbilisi, Georgia; Department of Neuron Ultrastructure and Nanoarchitecture, Ivane Beritashvili Center of Experimental Biomedicine, 14 Gotua Street, 9160 Tbilisi, Georgia.
Department of Neuron Ultrastructure and Nanoarchitecture, Ivane Beritashvili Center of Experimental Biomedicine, 14 Gotua Street, 9160 Tbilisi, Georgia; School of Medicine, New Vision University, 1A Evgeni Mikeladze Street, 0159 Tbilisi, Georgia.
Neurosci Lett. 2021 Nov 20;765:136262. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2021.136262. Epub 2021 Sep 21.
Previously, we had observed age-related cognitive decline in male rats compared to adolescent and adult rats. This was shown in both a multi-branched maze test (MBM), as well as in the Morris water maze test (MWM). In the present study, we compared the behavior of similar age groups in both male and female rats using the same paradigms. The results confirmed the increase in errors and time spent in MBM in aged male rats compared to other age groups. However, no such differences were observed in female rats. In the acquisition phase of MWM, aged male rats did not differ significantly from the other two groups in terms of time spent in quadrants, whereas aged female rats spent significantly more time in quadrants compared to the other 2 age groups. Aged male rats also travelled significantly more than the other 2 age groups during the acquisition phase, whereas no such differences were observed in female rats. In both short term (30 min post acquisition) and long term (24 h after acquisition) retrieval phases of MWM, significant gender-related differences were also observed in all age groups. These findings suggest gender- and context-dependent alterations in cognitive functions during aging.
先前，我们观察到雄性大鼠的认知能力随年龄增长而下降，与青少年和成年大鼠相比更是如此。这在多分支迷宫测试（MBM）和 Morris 水迷宫测试（MWM）中都有体现。在本研究中，我们使用相同的范式比较了类似年龄组雄性和雌性大鼠的行为。结果证实，与其他年龄组相比，老年雄性大鼠在 MBM 中犯错和花费的时间增加。然而，在雌性大鼠中没有观察到这种差异。在 MWM 的获得阶段，与其他两组相比，老年雄性大鼠在象限中花费的时间没有显著差异，而老年雌性大鼠在象限中花费的时间明显多于其他两组。在获得阶段，老年雄性大鼠的行驶距离也明显多于其他两组，而在雌性大鼠中则没有观察到这种差异。在 MWM 的短期（获得后 30 分钟）和长期（获得后 24 小时）检索阶段，所有年龄组也都观察到了明显的与性别相关的差异。这些发现表明，在衰老过程中，认知功能存在性别和情境依赖性的改变。
