title: Lack of effect of an early stressful life event on sensorimotor gating in adult rats.
abstract: Hypotheses of the etiology of schizophrenia emphasize the important role of perinatal insults in predisposing individuals to the development of the disease, so that an animal model in which a discrete postnatal manipulation of the infant social environment yields schizophrenia-like behavior in adulthood would be valuable in terms of the study of the neural substrate and treatment of schizophrenia. Schizophrenics demonstrate a deficit in sensorimotor gating (prepulse inhibition), and a similar phenomenon has been described in adult rats following the administration of direct and indirect dopamine agonists. Recently it has been reported that a 24 h separation of rat pups from the mother results in a disruption of prepulse inhibition at adulthood. Here we report a study which investigated the same phenomenon but which, in contrast to the previous study, utilized unrelated subjects all derived from different dams. Maternal separation was conducted for 24 h with pups aged 4, 9 or 18 days and these subjects, together with non-separated controls, were tested at age 3 months in terms of their prepulse inhibition in the acoustic startle response paradigm. Maternal separation did not disrupt prepulse inhibition. Comparison of males and females (with a maximum of one opposite-sex sibling) demonstrated that acoustic startle response and prepulse inhibition of this response was enhanced in males relative to females. This study indicates that 24 h maternal separation does not provide a robust model for studying the effects of early environmental insults on the long-term abnormal development of sensorimotor gating.
authors.affiliation: Behavioural Biology Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Schwerzenbach.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lehmann
authors.forename: C R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Pryce
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Feldon
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn / Q000523:psychology; D001143:Arousal; D001288:Attention; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D008297:Male; D008426:Maternal Deprivation; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D013216:Reflex, Startle; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications*