Single, intense prenatal stress decreases emotionality and enhances learning performance in the adolescent rat offspring: interaction with a brief, daily maternal separation.
Perinatal manipulations can lead to neurobehavioural changes in the progeny. In this study we investigated, in adolescent male rat offspring, the consequences of a single, intense prenatal stress induced by a 120 min-maternal immobilization at gestational day 16, and of a daily, brief maternal separation from postnatal day 2 until 21, on: unconditioned fear/anxiety-like behaviour in open field and in elevated plus-maze; learning performance in the "Can test", a non-aversive spatial and tactile/visual task; corticosterone plasma levels under basal and stress-induced conditions. Our results indicate that both prenatal stress and maternal separation procedures decrease emotionality and enhance learning performance. Maternal separation potentiates prenatal stress-induced effects in enhancing learning performance. Both basal and stress-induced corticosterone plasma levels are reduced following prenatal stress, maternal separation and the combination of two procedures. These findings suggest that a single, intense prenatal stress can enhance the adaptive stress-related responses in the progeny, probably due to the involvement of maternal factors. The synergistic effect of prenatal stress and maternal separation on learning performance may be due to a further damping of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis response in the progeny that better cope with the task administered.
Cannizzaro
Carla
C
Dipartimento di Scienze Farmacologiche, Università di Palermo, Palermo, Italy. psycho@unipa.it
Plescia
Fulvio
F
Martire
Maria
M
Gagliano
Mauro
M
Cannizzaro
Gaspare
G
Mantia
Giacoma
G
Cannizzaro
Emanuele
E
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001007:Anxiety / Q000097:blood / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003345:Corticosterone / Q000097:blood; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D008426:Maternal Deprivation; D011247:Pregnancy; D011297:Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D011897:Random Allocation; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000097:blood / Q000503:physiopathology*
D003345:Corticosterone