Núñez J F, Ferré P, García E, Escorihuela R M, Fernández-Teruel A, Tobeña A
Department of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain.
Physiol Behav. 1995 May;57(5):831-5. doi: 10.1016/0031-9384(94)00308-r.
The present study evaluated whether postnatal handling (PH; administered daily during the first 21 days of life) could reduce anxiety or emotional reactivity in tasks of either spontaneous or conditioned fear-related behavior. To this purpose control nonhandled and postnatally handled female rats were submitted to three different behavioral tests: an emotionality rating (ER) followed by an elevated plus-maze test of anxiety in one experiment, and an acquisition of two-way active (shuttlebox) avoidance under two different training conditions in a separate experiment. Significant effects of PH treatment appeared in the three testing situations, clearly indicating an important and enduring reduction of emotionality/anxiety in PH-treated rats. Of special interest were the results of shuttlebox training: by shortening the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the intertrial interval (ITI) duration, avoidance acquisition was impaired as expected but the improving effects of PH were even more marked. The results are discussed in relation to previous studies reporting controversial results in the same (or similar) testing situations.
本研究评估了产后处理（PH；在出生后的前21天每天进行）是否能降低自发或条件性恐惧相关行为任务中的焦虑或情绪反应性。为此，将未进行产后处理的对照雌性大鼠和经过产后处理的雌性大鼠进行了三种不同的行为测试：在一个实验中，先进行情绪评分（ER），然后进行高架十字迷宫焦虑测试；在另一个单独的实验中，在两种不同的训练条件下进行双向主动（穿梭箱）回避训练。产后处理治疗在三种测试情况下均出现显著效果，清楚地表明经产后处理的大鼠的情绪/焦虑有重要且持久的降低。穿梭箱训练的结果特别有趣：通过缩短条件刺激（CS）和试验间隔（ITI）持续时间，回避学习如预期那样受到损害，但产后处理的改善效果更为明显。结合之前在相同（或类似）测试情况下报告有争议结果的研究对这些结果进行了讨论。
