title: Exposure to salient, dynamic sensory stimuli during development increases distractibility in adulthood.
abstract: It has been suggested that excessive exposure of children to the dynamic and highly salient audio-visual stimuli conveyed by electronic media may induce attention-related deficits in adulthood. This study was designed to evaluate this hypothesis in a controlled animal model setup. Building on their natural responsiveness to odors, we exposed juvenile rats for 1 h daily to a dynamic series of interchanging, highly salient odors, while controls were exposed to a non-changing mixture of these odors. Upon reaching adulthood, we tested the attentional capacity of the rats and measured their brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels as a proxy of neuronal plasticity. As compared with controls, rats exposed to the dynamic stimulation showed no attentional deficits under baseline task conditions, but their performance was dramatically impaired when an auditory distractor was introduced in the task. In addition, BDNF levels in the dorsal striatum of these rats were significantly increased relative to controls. These findings provide first empirical evidence that a continuous exposure to dynamic, highly salient stimuli has long-term effects on attentional functions later in life, and that these effects may have neural correlates in the dorsal striatum.
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences and the Zlotowski Centre for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Itay
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Hadas
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences and the Zlotowski Centre for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Ram
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gal
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences and the Zlotowski Centre for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Lihi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bokovza
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and the Zlotowski Centre for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Nachshon
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Meiran
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences Program, University of California, San Diego, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Feifel
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences and the Zlotowski Centre for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Abraham
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zangen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D019208:Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor / Q000378:metabolism; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D008297:Male; D009812:Odorants; D051381:Rats
chemical_list: D019208:Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor