title: Infantile handling eliminates reversal learning deficit in rats prenatally exposed to alcohol.
abstract: Prenatal exposure to ethanol results in learning deficits and alters physiological response to stress. Neonatal handling and stimulation. on the other hand, produce long-lasting physiological and behavioral changes in response to stress. To determine whether early handling, consisting of daily separation and tactile stimulation for the first 3 weeks, can modify fetal alcohol effects on learning ability of young adult rats, offspring of rats chronically exposed to ethanol throughout pregnancy and control animals were trained in a T-maze to learn a position response and then to reverse the learned response. The nonhandled, ethanol-treated rats were deficient on reversal, but the ethanol-treated rats that were handled during the first 3 weeks of postnatal development showed no deficit in learning to reverse their previously learned responses. Postnatal handling had no effect on acquisition in alcohol-treated rats. Neither reversal nor acquisition was affected by infantile handling in pair-fed or normal control animals. Early handling may have eliminated the reversal deficit in the ethanol-treated offspring by altering their physiological and behavioral reactivity to stress.
authors.affiliation: New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, Staten Island 10314, USA. mhlee@webspan.net
authors.forename: M H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rabe
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002492:Central Nervous System Depressants / Q000494:pharmacology*; D000431:Ethanol / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005260:Female; D006234:Handling, Psychological; D007858:Learning / Q000187:drug effects*; D008297:Male; D011247:Pregnancy; D011297:Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans; D012737:Sex Factors
chemical_list: D002492:Central Nervous System Depressants; D000431:Ethanol