title: Perinatal undernutrition impairs spatial learning in recovered adult rats.
abstract: Learning ability of adult rats undernourished at perinatal age and nutritionally recovered (D-rats) was assayed in the Morris water maze test as compared with controls (C-rats). D-rats showed longer escape latencies to locate a hidden platform in absence of proximal cues during the acquisition period. Swimming pre-training experience did not improve this shortcoming. Retention scores obtained 1, 3, 10 and 30 days after training showed that spatial information was efficiently consolidated after acquisition since D-rats performed as well as C-rats on retention tests. A cue learning task revealed no significant differences between both groups. These results suggest that perinatal undernutrition induces, even after a long period of nutritional recovery, a deficit in efficient place navigation in adult rats.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Farmacología, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: N E
authors.initials: NE
authors.lastname: Córdoba
authors.forename: M P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Arolfo
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Brioni
authors.forename: O A
authors.initials: OA
authors.lastname: Orsingher
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D018782:Maze Learning; D008568:Memory; D011247:Pregnancy; D011488:Protein Deficiency / Q000503:physiopathology*; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D011930:Reaction Time; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D013550:Swimming