Ethanol-exposed Neonatal Rats Are Impaired As Adults in Classical Eyeblink Conditioning at Multiple Unconditioned Stimulus Intensities.
From: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. dhlind@ku.edu
Brain research
- Publish Date: May 2007
- ISSN: 0006-8993
- Volume: 1150
- Issue:
- Pages: 155-66
- Medium: Print
- Language: English
- Citation (JAMA): Lindquist Derick H, Sokoloff Greta, Steinmetz Joseph E, et al. Ethanol-exposed Neonatal Rats Are Impaired As Adults in Classical Eyeblink Conditioning at Multiple Unconditioned Stimulus Intensities.. Brain Res. May 2007;1150:155-66
Abstract
Binge-like exposure to ethanol early in development results in neurotoxic impairments throughout the brain, including the cerebellum and brainstem. Rats exposed to ethanol, during a period of time commensurate with the human third trimester, also show deficits in classical eyeblink conditioning (EBC), a cerebellar-dependent associative learning procedure. The relationship between ethanol-mediated EBC deficits and the intensity of the unconditioned stimulus (US) was explored in the current study. Neonatal rats were intubated and infused with ethanol (EtOH rats), sham-intubated and given no ethanol (SI rats), or reared as unhandled controls (UC rats). As adults, all rats underwent 10 days of 350 ms delay eyeblink conditioning with a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and one of three co-terminating periorbital shock US. The frequency and topography of the conditioned eyeblink response (CR) were impaired in EtOH rats relative to UC rats. EtOH rats produced fewer CRs, with longer onset latencies, at all US intensities. In contrast, CR amplitude was impaired in EtOH rats at the highest US intensity only. Following conditioning, the unconditioned eyeblink response (UR) was analyzed in subsets of rats from each treatment group at five US intensities. Early ethanol exposure did not impair UR peak amplitude. The deficits in CR production are proposed to result from ethanol-mediated damage within specific regions of the EBC neural circuit.
Mesh Headings (Keywords): Acoustic Stimulation, Analysis of Variance, Animals, Animals, Newborn, Behavior, Animal, Blinking, Central Nervous System Depressants, Conditioning, Classical, Dose-Response Relationship, Radiation, Electric Stimulation, Ethanol, Female, Male, Rats, Rats, Long-Evans, Reaction Time, Time Factors
Check for Full Text / PubMed Unique Identifier (PMID): 17395165
This abstract is part of PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed includes more than 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles. See Copyright and Disclaimers.
Linked medical terms appearing on this page are added by Healia to help readers find more information and are not part of the original PubMed document.
The data herein was last updated on July 8th, 2008 and may not reflect the most current and accurate data available from NLM.