The objective of the present study was to examine the effects of prenatal exposure
to alcohol on sensorimotor coordination, emotionality, learning and memory in
young adult Wistar rats. Most of the recent reports concerning behavioral effects of
fetal alcohol exposure refer to the juvenile period of life and very few studies
investigated different aspects of behavior simultaneously in the same subjects. In
the current study, alcohol was delivered to the pregnant dams by intragastric
infusions, throughout gestation days (GD) 7-20, at the dose of 6g /kg maternal body
weight /day. This dose resulted in relatively high peak blood alcohol concentration
(340 mg/dl) as assessed on GD 20. A pair-fed isocaloric and untreated control
groups were included. Prenatal alcohol administration retarded dams&rsquo / weight gain
significantly, and had an adverse effect on pups&rsquo / weight at birth but not in
adulthood. No between-group differences were observed in the litter size and in the
pups&rsquo / mortality. The adult brain weight was neither affected. Pups were subjected to
a series of behavioural tests as young adults (at 2.5 months of age). In adulthood,
rats prenatally treated with alcohol were not impaired in sensorimotor coordination
and/or did not show muscle weakness as assessed by rotarod/accelerod tests. Their
behavior in the open field and plus maze suggested alcohol-induced increase in
iv
anxiety level and some decrease in behavioral flexibility, but hyperactivity was not
observed. In cognitive tasks, alcohol treated rats showed slightly slower rate of
initial place learning in the water maze. However, memory retention tested after 1
and 10-day delay, reversal learning, rate of extinction of place preference, as well as
working memory capacity appeared to be the same in alcohol exposed and control
rats. The possible reasons of this negative result are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12605930/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 January 2005 |
| Creators | Dursun, Ilknur |
| Contributors | Dogru, Ewa |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds