title: Attention and memory in aged rats: Impact of lifelong environmental enrichment.
abstract: Aged rodents exhibit memory and attention dysfunctions. Environmental enrichment (EE) attenuates memory impairments. Whether it may reduce attention deficits is not known. At the age of 1 month, Long-Evans female rats were placed in standard or EE conditions and tested after 3 (young), 12 (middle-aged) or 24 (aged) months of differential housing. Spatial reference memory was assessed in a water-maze task. Attention performance was evaluated in the five-choice serial reaction time (5-CSRT) task. EE improved spatial memory at all ages, but did not ameliorate 5-CSRT performance in young and middle-aged rats; it prevented, however, the degradation of attention performances detected in aged rats. The number of ChAT (+30 to +64%)- and p75(NTR)-positive (+35 to +44%) neurons was higher in the basal forebrain of aged enriched vs. standard rats, suggesting their EE-mediated protection. The weaker deficit of attention found in aged EE rats might be linked to a better survival in the very long term of neurons in the basalo-cortical system.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Imagerie et de Neurosciences Cognitives, Université de Strasbourg, IFR 37 de Neurosciences, GDR 2905 du CNRS, 12 rue Goethe, F-67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: Hayat
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Harati
authors.forename: Monique
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Majchrzak
authors.forename: Brigitte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Cosquer
authors.forename: Rodrigue
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Galani
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kelche
authors.forename: Jean-Christophe
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Cassel
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Barbelivien
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001835:Body Weight / Q000502:physiology; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism; D002452:Cell Count; D002795:Choline O-Acetyltransferase / Q000378:metabolism; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D006799:Housing, Animal; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism; D010320:Parvalbumins / Q000378:metabolism; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D020800:Receptor, Nerve Growth Factor / Q000378:metabolism; D012044:Regression Analysis
chemical_list: D010320:Parvalbumins; D020800:Receptor, Nerve Growth Factor; D002795:Choline O-Acetyltransferase