The effects of complex motor task learning on subsequent motor performance of adult rats exposed to alcohol on postnatal days 4 through 9 were studied. Male and female Long-Evans rats were assigned to one of three treatments: (1) alcohol exposure (AE) via artificial rearing to 4.5.g kg-1 day-1 of ethanol in a binge-like manner (two consecutive feedings), (2) gastrostomy control (GC) fed isocaloric milk formula via artificial rearing, and (3) suckling control (SC), where pups remained with lactating dams. After completion of the treatments, the pups were fostered back to lactating dams, and after weaning they were raised in standard cages (two-three animals per cage) until they were 6 months old. Rats from each of the postnatal treatments then spent 20 days in one of three conditions: (1) inactive condition (IC), (2) motor control condition (MC) (running on a flat oval track), or (3) rehabilitation condition (RC) (learning to traverse a set of 10 elevated obstacles). After that all the animals were tested on three tasks, sensitive to balance and coordination deficits (parallel bars, rope climbing and traversing a rotating rod). On parallel bars, both male and female rats demonstrated the same pattern of outcomes: AE-IC rats made significantly more mistakes (slips and falls) than IC rats from both control groups. After 20 days of training in the RC condition, there were no differences between AE and both SC and GC animals in their ability to perform on the parallel bars test. On rope climbing, female animals showed a similar pattern of abilities: AE-IC rats were the worst group; exercising did not significantly improve the AE rats' ability to climb, whereas the RC groups (SC, GC and AE) all performed near asymptote and there were no significant differences among three neonatal treatment groups. There was a substantial effect of the male rats' heavier body weight on climbing ability, and this may have prevented the deficits in AE rats behavior from being detected. Nevertheless, male animals from all three postnatal treatments (SC, GC and AE) were significantly better on this task after RC. Female and male rats from all three postnatal groups demonstrated significantly better performance on the rotarod task after 20 days of 'rehabilitation'. These results suggest that complex motor skill learning improves some of the motor performance deficits produced by postnatal exposure to alcohol and can potentially serve as a model for rehabilitative intervention.
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