Post-weaning social isolation or rat pups is a neurodevelopmental manipulation shown to produce behavioural, neurobiological and neurochemical changes in adulthood relating to schizophrenia. The main objective of this thesis was to further characterise the behavioural effect of social isolation, and in pm1icular, to develop a model that reflects the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and use this to investigate the effect of novel therapeutic agents. This was undertaken, by first, investigating the effect of atypical antipsychotics risperidone and clozapine on post-weaning social isolation-induced cognitive deficits. The behavioural profile in this model was fm1her investigated by examining reversal learning and set-shifting in this model. Fm1her to this, neonatal PCP, post-weaning social isolation and neonatal PCP combined with isolation rearing were examined in a social interaction paradigm as an index of negative symptoms. Final studies evaluated the effect of a novel glycine transporter 1 inhibitor ROx (the compound details have been excluded throughout the thesis at the request of the sponsors) on the social interaction deficits induced by the 'two-hit' model of schizophrenia.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:662200 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | McIntosh, Allison Louise |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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