Developmental neuroscienceNeurodevelopment milestone abnormalities in rats exposed to stress in early life
Section snippets
Animals
Female primigestous Wistar rats (Charles River, Barcelona, Spain) were maintained under standard laboratory conditions under artificial 12-h light/dark cycle: lights on from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and an ambient temperature of 22 °C; food and water were available ad libitum. The day on which a female rat showed a vaginal plug was designated as embryonic day 0 and the day of delivery as postnatal day (PND) 0. Males were removed from the cage when a vaginal plug was confirmed. Nest material was
Effects of experimental procedures in maternal behavior
Maternal behavior was not significant affected by the separation of the pups as can be observed in Table 1. The only significant difference was related with the feeding time of the pups, which was increased during the observation period in maternal separated groups, probably as a compensation for the 6 h period of maternal separation (36.1 min for MS and 21.7 min for Cont).
Effects of maternal separation on basal corticosterone levels in pups and mothers
Statistical analysis showed that maternal separation significantly increased basal levels of corticosterone in both male (P
Discussion
Neurodevelopmental assessment typically includes analysis/scoring of physical growth and maturation and neurological reflexes (Spear 1990, Sousa et al 2006). Maturational parameters such as timing of ear and eye opening, teeth eruption, body weight and ano-genital distance measure the physical maturation. Dynamic tests of sensorimotor development, such as negative geotaxis, postural and righting reflexes, reflect maturation of vestibular function (Altman and Sudarshan 1975, Khan et al 2004),
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology for providing a predoctoral fellowship to A. R. Mesquita (SFRH/BD/11838/2003) and postdoctoral one to T. Summavielle (SFRH/BPD/20997/2004).
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