Reversal learning after prenatal or early postnatal alcohol exposure in juvenile and adult rats.

Full Abstract

Learning tasks that require the reversal of a previously learned contingency are disrupted in animals and humans exposed to alcohol during the perinatal period. The current experiments examined how varying the time of alcohol exposure and the age at which subjects were tested would affect the expression of reversal deficits in a T-maze task. Groups of rats were exposed to alcohol from gestational day (GD) 8 to GD20 or from postnatal day (PN) 4 to PN9, and then tested in a spatial reversal task at either PN28 or PN63. Results indicate that exposure to alcohol during the prenatal period did not lead to substantial dose-dependent reversal learning deficits in males or females at either age tested. However, exposure to alcohol during the early postnatal period, a period that corresponds to the third trimester in human neural development, selectively disrupted reversal learning performance in male rats at PN28 but not PN63. Statistically significant sex differences were seen when subjects were tested at PN63. These results demonstrate how the timing of alcohol exposure leads to variability in the age-dependent expression of learning deficits associated with fetal alcohol effects.

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Author information

Author/s: O'Leary-Moore, Shonagh K (SK); McMechan, Andrew P (AP); Mathison, Shannon N (SN); Berman, Robert F (RF); Hannigan, John H (JH);

Affiliation: Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth & Development, 275 East Hancock, Detroit, MI 48201, USA. soleary(-atsign-)wayne.edu

Grants: R01-AA12015 (Agency:NIAAA NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) (Alcohol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Feb; vol 38 (issue 2) : pp 99-110

Dates: Created 2006/07/14; Completed 2006/11/14; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 16839856, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Aging
Animals
Animals, Newborn
Ethanol - administration & dosage; blood
Female
Gestational Age
Male

Associated Chemicals: Ethanol (64-17-5)

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