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The maternal consumption of alcohol during pregnancy produces a wide range of abnormalities in the offspring. The major objectives of this thesis were to investigate (1) the correspondence between prenatal ethanol-induced alterations in behavior and in hypothalamicpituitary- adrenal (HPA) activity, (2) the ability of early postnatal handling as an environmental manipulation to attenuate at least some of the adverse behavioral and physiological consequences of prenatal ethanol exposure, and (3) possible mechanisms mediating the HP A hyperresponsiveness to stressors observed in animals prenatally exposed to ethanol and the possible influence of postnatal handling on those mechanisms. Sprague-Dawley rats from prenatal ethanol (E), pair-fed (PF) and ad libitum fed control (C) treatment groups were tested as young adults (-35-120 d of age) or mid-aged adults (13-14 months of age). The first study investigated the effects of prenatal ethanol exposure (E) and postnatal handling (H) on behavior and HPA activity during a conditioned taste aversion (CTA) task. We tested the hypothesis that E animals which underwent postnatal handling would show improved conditioned aversion learning and reduced HPA activity compared to E animals that did not experience handling (nonhandled, NH). We found that prenatal ethanol exposure and postnatal handling independently resulted in an increased rate of consumption of a saccharin solution over five preexposure days. In addition, we found that handling differentially affected posttoxicosis consumption of the conditioned solution as well as corticosterone (CORT) levels in E, PF and C animals. H-E animals showed increased posttoxicosis intake compared to H-PF and H-C animals during reexposure under non-deprived conditions; CORT levels were lower in PF and C than E males compared to their N H counterparts during reexposure under food- and waterdeprived conditions. Thus, E animals were less able to utilize environmental cues in the present study, displaying a more rapid reduction in neophobia compared to PF and C animals and, following postnatal handling, showing a decreased acquisition of conditioned aversion and an increased CORT response during reexposure to the conditioned solution. The second study examined spatial learning and memory in young adult (2 months) and mid-aged (13-14 months of age) H and N H E and control animals utilizing a Morris water maze. We investigated the hypothesis that postnatal handling would improve spatial navigation in E animals compared to E animals that did not experience handling and/or attenuate differences among E and control animals, and that this effect might be age-dependent. We also examined whether performance deficits in mid-aged animals would correspond to increases in CORT levels on the last day of testing. Young E males showed impairments in spatial navigation compared to young PF and C animals, taking longer to find the hidden platform over the course of testing and displaying an alteration in search pattern when the platform was removed. Interestingly, differences in young E, PF and C animals in escape latency and in distance traveled prior to finding the platform were apparent in H but not in N H animals. There were no differences in performance on the Morris water maze in mid-aged E, PF and C animals, but CORT levels were elevated in mid-aged E compared to C animals, supporting previous data indicating that E animals demonstrate HPA hyperresponsiveness to stressors. Lastly, although mid-aged animals had longer escape latencies and an altered search pattern compared to young animals, handling did not appear to attenuate impairments associated with aging. The third study investigated the hypothesis that postnatal handling might attenuate stress-induced ACTH and/or CORT differences among E, PF and C animals. Furthermore, the ability pf postnatal handling to modulate HPA feedback deficits in E animals was examined during exposure to a restraint stressor following dexamethasone (DEX) administration. Both E females and males showed increased ACTH and CORT compared to PF and/or C animals following saline administration. Administration of DEX to block HPA activity significantly suppressed both plasma ACTH and CORT in all animals. However, E females exhibited increased and/or prolonged elevations in ACTH and CORT compared to PF and C animals following DEX blockade. These data suggest that the insult of prenatal ethanol exposure affects both male and female offspring, but that there may be a sex-specific difference in sensitivity of the mechanism(s) underlying HPA hyperresponsiveness. Postnatal handling reduced ACTH levels in both females and males following saline administration. Following DEX administration, H males had lower CORT than NH males. Postnatal handling resulted in a more rapid decrease in stress-associated CORT elevations in C females, and attenuated differences in CORT between PF and C females. However, postnatal handling did not attenuate deficits in negative feedback inhibition in E females; E females in both the H and N H treatments showed elevated CORT compared to their C counterparts, and H-E females also showed elevated CORT compared to H-PF females. Thus, postnatal handling did not attenuate the typical HPA hyperresponsiveness to stressors observed in E animals (saline condition), nor did it eliminate deficits in HPA feedback inhibition in E females (DEX condition). The fourth study examined whether the mechanisms resulting in HPA hyperresponsiveness in E animals are similar to those underlying the effects of postnatal handling. Differences in HPA responsiveness between H and NH animals appear to be dependent upon basal CORT activity and not stress-induced elevations in CORT. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that differences in HPA activity among E and control animals would not occur following adrenalectomy (ADX) but could be reestablished following replacement with basal levels of exogenous CORT. In the absence of a CORT feedback signal or in the presence of a constant, basal CORT feedback signal, E, PF and C animals did not significantly differ in their abilities to regulate ACTH secretion, indicating that during the trough of the circadian rhythm, E, PF and C animals are equally capable of regulating HPA activity utilizing either CORT-independent feedback or feedback mediated through basal CORT activity. Thus, the effects of prenatal ethanol exposure on HPA function do not appear to be dependent upon the feedback signal provided by basal CORT levels. In conclusion, handling did not attenuate the effects of prenatal ethanol exposure examined in the present experiments. This may be because the effects of postnatal handling and prenatal ethanol exposure on HPA function are mediated through different mechanisms as well as the finding that handling is, at least partly, mediated through mother-pup interactions. Therefore, postnatal handling might exert differential effects on litters in which pup behavior has already been altered by prenatal treatments, underscoring the enduring effects of prenatal ethanol exposure.

Excitatory glutamatergic inputs from limbic regions such as the hippocampus and the basolateral amygdala (BLA), and dopaminergic inputs from the ventral tegmental area converge in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). It has been proposed that interactions between these glutamatergic and dopaminergic pathways play an important role in adaptive behaviors. The present thesis employed a multidisciplinary approach to study these interactions, with a specific emphasis on the importance of mesoaccumbens dopamine (DA) transmission, in order to obtain a better understanding of the neural mechanisms by which the NAc transforms signals from the temporal lobes into behavior. The experiments of Chapter 2 utilized extracellular single-unit recordings of individual NAc neurons in combination with electrochemical measures of DA efflux in the NAc. Recordings from NAc neurons which received input from the hippocampus but not the BLA revealed that increased efflux of mesoaccumbens DA, evoked by tetanic stimulation of the fimbria, potentiated hippocampal-evoked neural activity in these cells. These effects were mediated by both DA and NMDA receptors. Similar recordings from neurons which received converging input from both the hippocampus and the BLA revealed tetanic stimulation of the fimbria again potentiated hippocampal evoked spiking activity, while concurrently suppressing BLA-evoked spiking activity in the same neurons. The suppression of BLA-evoked spiking activity was activity-dependent, and was mediated by both D, and adenosine A, receptors. Chapter 3 showed that random foraging on a radial-arm maze, which is dependent on a neural circuit linking the hippocampus to the NAc, was correlated with an increase in mesoaccumbens DA extracellular levels, as measured with microdialysis. In Chapter 4, pharmacological blockade of DA or NMDA receptors in the NAc, or selective disruption of dopaminergic modulation of ventral subicular inputs to the NAc (using an asymmetrical infusion procedure) significantly disrupted random foraging. These effects were mediated by the Dl receptor. In Chapter 5, the present data are integrated with previous research to formulate a model of ventral striatal function. It is proposed that the NAc mediates behavior through distinct patterns of activity and inactivity driven by excitatory limbic input projecting to different groups of neural ensembles. Mesoaccumbens DA transmission plays an essential role in regulating the synchrony ensemble activity, augmenting activity in one ensemble while suppressing activity in another. It is argued that the modulatory effects of DA appears to be essential when an organism must switch from one form of adaptive behavior to another in response to a constantly changing environment.

Our thesis researches the Halloween effects in the Swedish stock market from a sector perspective. The notion Halloween effect refers to higher returns during the period November until April than the period May until October. The anomaly has been confirmed by previous researchers in Sweden among other countries. There has not been any definite explanation for this anomaly. The majority of explanations base on the assumption that the anomaly is a market wide and induced by changes in investment behavior. However, previous research has shown that the Halloween effect could be limited to certain sectors which experience significantly higher returns during winter months than the summer months. The sectors that exhibited the high Halloween effect tend to be heavy industry sectors while consumer oriented sectors tend to outperform during summer periods. In our study we research the Swedish sectors to test whether the findings of previous researches are true for other market as well. Our result indicates that the Halloween effect is present in a few sectors and not market wide. The findings thus support previous research that the Halloween effect is sector specific. The sectors that exhibited the highest Halloween effect were sectors in heavy industry.