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The aim of this study was to investigate the intra- and intermodal impact of different kinds of early sensory experience on the development of specific neural/perceptual systems. The manipulations of the rats' early experience involved a combination of early binocular deprivation through dark-rearing, somatosensory restriction through cauterization of mystacial vibrissae, and multimodal enrichment through rearing in a complex environment. Specific lesions to somatosensory (Parl) and visual (Oc2M) cortex in differentially reared animals were included in an attempt to gain further insight into the plasticity surrounding manipulations of early stimulation history. Five tasks were used to assess these effects of early rearing condition in combination with later cortical lesions. Behavioral assessment focused on the ability of the animals to encode, abstract, and remember specific relationships between stimuli within the deprived modality itself, their ability to do so with information presented in other modalities, and on the basic species specific behavior. The only effect found was a main effect for rearing condition. Basically, complex-reared rats were more competent on several of the behavioral tasks than were dark-reared rats. However, this result provided little behavioral support for ideas of modality interdependence. Dendritic proliferation is considered to be a general mechanism supporting behavioral change. The subsequent neuroanatomical assessment focused on dendritic branching of neurons in specific cortical areas thought to be most affected by early environmental manipulations. Animals that were raised in a complex environment, but had experienced early tactile restriction through cauterization of vibrissae, showed significantly more dendritic branching than animals from all other rearing conditions in all cortical areas measured. This finding is consistent with ideas of both intra- and intermodal compensation following damage to an early developing modality, as well as behavioral demand acting as a significant factor in determining the impact of early somatosensory restriction. It is reasonable to assume that anatomical changes should be manifested behaviorally. Suggestions for smaller, more restricted studies, that would be more effective in describing the behavioral impact of early manipulations of the environment, were outlined. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1986 M675 / Master of Science / Psychological Sciences

This study examined the effect of prolonged differential housing and/or diet following exposure to chronic restraint stress on body weight, body fat weight, body fat composition and corticosterone, glucose, insulin and leptin levels. To this end, male Wistar rats were individually-housed (IH) or pair-housed (PH) and fed a condensed milk diet (CD) or a mushy rat chow diet (MD) for twelve weeks. Subsequently, all rats underwent chronic restraint stress (CRS) for seven hours/day for four weeks. During CRS, only PH rats fed MD continued to gain weight, while growth of the other groups was stunted. Housing and diet impacted on body fat weights, where PH caused increased retrorenal fat (P<0.001) in rats fed MD, while in rats fed CD, PH gave rise to less visceral (P<0.01) and more interscapular (P<0.05) and retrorenal fat (P<0.001). The CD resulted in more retrorenal (P<0.001) and interscapular fat (P<0.05) in PH rats, with more visceral (P<0.001) and retrorenal fat (P<0.01) in IH rats. Housing influenced only the fatty acid profiles of the liver and subcutaneous fat in rats fed CD. The CD caused differing fatty acid profiles of the liver, subcutaneous fat, visceral fat, interscapular fat and muscle in PH rats, while altering the fatty acid profiles of the liver, subcutaneous fat, interscapular fat and muscle in IH rats. Housing and diet did not result in differences in corticosterone, insulin and glucose concentrations, while both resulted in significantly elevated leptin levels in PH rats fed CD. Therefore the types of housing and diet have various effects on body weight and glucose and fat metabolism following chronic stress. This dissertation is dedicated to My dear parents, Jeff and Avril Ackerman, for their on-going support My loving husband, Brandon, for his encouragement, assistance and patience My children, Elazar Tzvi, Sara Esther, Yaakov Yehuda and Rossi Bear who have been my stress alleviators and Idah Rangwato and Annah Sibanda who are my right-hand ladies and have made it possible to complete this dissertation- Thank you!

Male rats have been found to extinguish a conditioned taste aversion slower than females. It has also been found that female rats that have been "handled" (i.e., exposed to daily brief isolation from siblings and mother) during the preweaning period extinguish a taste aversion faster than nonhandled females. The present study sought to combine and extend these findings by testing handled and nonhandled females and males in a conditioned taste aversion under the methodological conditions used in the sex difference research.