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Postnatal ethanol exposure disrupts signal detection in adult rats
- Source :
- Neurotoxicology and Teratology. 27:815-823
- Publication Year :
- 2005
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2005.
-
Abstract
- Human prenatal ethanol exposure that occurs during a period of increased synaptogenesis known as the “brain growth spurt” has been associated with significant impairments in attention, learning, and memory. The present experiment assessed whether administration of ethanol during the brain growth spurt in the rat, which occurs shortly after birth, disrupts attentional performance. Rats were administered 5.25 g/kg/day ethanol via intragastric intubation from postnatal days (PD) 4–9, sham-intubation, or no intubation (naive). Beginning at PD 90, animals were trained to asymptotic performance in a two-lever attention task that required discrimination of brief visual signals from trials with no signal presentation. Finally, manipulations of background noise and inter-trial interval duration were conducted. Early postnatal ethanol administration did not differentially affect acquisition of the attention task. However, after rats were trained to asymptotic performance levels, those previously exposed to ethanol demonstrated a deficit in detection of signals but not of non-signals compared to sham-intubated and naive rats. The signal detection deficit persisted whenever these animals were re-trained in the standard task, but further task manipulations failed to interact with ethanol pretreatment. The present data support the hypothesis that early postnatal ethanol administration disrupts aspects of attentional processing in the rat.
- Subjects :
- Male
medicine.medical_specialty
Pathology
Signal Detection, Psychological
media_common.quotation_subject
Synaptogenesis
Attention task
Toxicology
Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Developmental Neuroscience
Internal medicine
medicine
Animals
Rats, Long-Evans
media_common
Ethanol
Ethanol exposure
Prenatal ethanol
Rats
Endocrinology
Brain growth
Ethanol administration
Animals, Newborn
Female
Psychology
Vigilance (psychology)
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 08920362
- Volume :
- 27
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Neurotoxicology and Teratology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....ab4baae1b8a5f20c46652e7f854bf137