Enduring effects of environmental enrichment from weaning to adulthood on pituitary-adrenal function, pre-pulse inhibition and learning in male and female rats

Flores-Peña, Yolanda; Prunell, M; Rotllant, David; Armario, Antonio; Escorihuela, Rosa M.

doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2009.04.019

Cited by 104 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 89 publications

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“…Our data are in line with previous studies from our lab (Fuentes et al, 2014;Peña et al, 2009) and with most previous reports measuring basal plasma corticosterone (e.g. Patchev et al, 1999;Rhodes et al, 2002;Seale et al, 2004a).…”

Section: Endocrine Responsesupporting

confidence: 93%

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Sex differences in the behavioural and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal response to contextual fear conditioning in rats

Daviu

Andero

Armario

et al. 2014

Hormones and Behavior

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SummaryIn recent years, special attention is being paid to sex differences in susceptibility to disease. In this regard, there is evidence that male rats present higher levels of both cued and contextual fear conditioning than females. However, little is known about the concomitant hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis response to those situations which is critical in emotional memories.Here, we studied the behavioural and HPA responses of male and female Wistar rats to context fear conditioning using electric footshock as the aversive stimulus. Fear-conditioned rats showed a much greater ACTH and corticosterone response than those merely exposed to the fear conditioning chamber without receiving shocks. Moreover, males presented higher levels of freezing whereas HPA axis response was greater in females. Accordingly, during the fear extinction tests, female rats consistently showed less freezing and higher extinction rate, but greater HPA activation than males. Exposure to an open-field resulted in lower activity/exploration in fear-conditioned males, but not females, suggesting greater conditioned cognitive generalization in males than females. It can be concluded that important sex differences in fear conditioning are observed in both freezing and HPA activation, but the two set of variables are affected in the opposite direction: enhanced behavioural impact in males, but enhanced HPA responsiveness in females. Thus, the role of sex differences on fear-related stimuli may depend on the variables chosen to evaluate it, the greater responsiveness of the HPA axis in females perhaps being an important factor to be further explored.

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Section: Endocrine Responsesupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Less consistent results have been obtained with resting ACTH levels likely because differences are usually small (e.g. Aloisi et al, 1994;Isawaki-Sekino et al, 2009;Peña et al,2009;Rivier, 1999).…”

Section: Endocrine Responsementioning

confidence: 95%

Sex differences in the behavioural and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal response to contextual fear conditioning in rats

Daviu

Andero

Armario

et al. 2014

Hormones and Behavior

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“…This result agrees with previous studies examining the effect of EC on the stress-induced increases of plasma corticosterone (Mlynarik et al 2004;Moncek et al 2004;Peña et al 2009;Sztainberg et al 2010). Our results extend these findings to the free levels of corticosterone in the brain, where it acts to modulate the HPA axis activity and behavioral adaptation to stress (Bruce S 2000;Herman et al 2005;Sandi and PineloNava 2007).…”

Section: Acute Stress and Corticosterone In The Pfcsupporting

confidence: 92%

Differential effects of environmental enrichment and isolation housing on the hormonal and neurochemical responses to stress in the prefrontal cortex of the adult rat: relationship to working and emotional memories

et al. 2012

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The present study was designed to investigate the modulation of the stress responses by the environmental conditions and its putative neurobiological mechanisms. For that an integrative study on the effects of environmental enrichment and isolation housing on 1/ the corticosterone, dopamine and acetylcholine responses to acute restraint stress in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the awake rat; 2/ the mRNA levels of glucocorticoid receptors (GRs) in the PFC; and 3/ the behavioral responses to stress, related to the PFC (habituation to a novel environment, spatial-working memory and inhibitory avoidance response) was performed. Male Wistar rats were maintained from 3 to 6 months of age in two different conditions: enriched (EC) or impoverished (IC). Animals were stereotaxically implanted with bilateral guide cannulae in the PFC to perform microdialysis experiments to evaluate the concentrations of corticosterone, dopamine and acetylcholine. EC animals showed lower increases of corticosterone and dopamine but not of acetylcholine than IC animals in the PFC in response to acute restraint stress (20min). In the PFC, GR mRNA levels showed a trend towards an enhancement in EC animals. EC reduced the days to learn the spatial working memory task (radial-water maze). Spatial working memory, however, was not different between groups in either basal or stress conditions. Inhibitory avoidance response was reduced in EC rats. The changes produced by EC in the neurochemical, neuroendocrine and behavioral parameters evaluated suggest that EC rats could show a better coping during an acute stress challenge.

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“…Mediante este laberinto puede obtenerse una gran cantidad de información acerca del curso del aprendizaje de un roedor, habiendo mostrado su utilidad para: (a) investigar los efectos del enriquecimiento ambiental sobre la capacidad de aprendizaje del animal (Peña et al, 2009), (b) evaluar la recuperación del aprendizaje después de lesiones límbicas en ratones (Meunier et al, 1986), (c) diferenciar la capacidad para aprender los laberintos según el sexo y/o la especie de ratón (Stanford y Brown, 2003) y (d) evaluar el efecto de fármacos sobre el aprendizaje y la memoria de los ratones (Vidal-Infer, Aguilar, Miñarro y Rodríguez-Arias, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

“…Como tendencia general, el sexo masculino destaca sobre el femenino en determinadas tareas que implican orientación espacial, tanto en humanos (Kimura, 2004; Sánchez-Sánchez, Sánchez-Marín y Sin-Villagomez, 2011) como en roedores (Rodrí-guez, Torres, Mackintosh y Chamizo, 2010; Stanford y Brown, 2003). Sin embargo, son escasas las investigaciones que profundizan en la interacción de las diferencias de sexo y el Laberinto Hebb-Williams: (a) no todos los estudios que han empleado esta prueba de aprendizaje espacial han incluido en su muestra a ratones hembras (Vidal-Infer et al, 2012); (b) las investigaciones que han trabajado tanto con ratones machos como con ratones hembras, pese a encontrar las diferencias de sexo pertinentes, no han centrado su objeto de estudio en el análisis profundo de este hallazgo (Galsworthy et al, 2005;Peña et al, 2009;Standford y Brown, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Diferencias sexuales en el aprendizaje del Laberinto Hebb-Williams con ratones OF1

Caballero-Reinaldo

Navarro-Francés

Arenas

2017

PSYWRIT

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ResumenEl Laberinto Hebb-Williams es una prueba utilizada para evaluar el aprendizaje espacial en animales. Aunque la capacidad espacial es una función cognitiva considerada sexodimórfica, donde los machos muestran una ventaja frente a las hembras, los resultados de los pocos estudios que evalúen diferencias de sexo en esta prueba no son concluyentes. Por ello, en este estudio nos propusimos comprobar si los ratones OF1 machos ejecutaban mejor que las hembras las tareas del Laberinto Hebb-Williams, y si esa ventaja era independiente de la dificultad del laberinto. Se utilizó la versión reducida para ratones, la cual consta de 5 laberintos, 3 consi-derados fáciles y 2 difíciles. Los resultados en general corroboraron una mejor ejecu-ción de los machos frente a las hembras, con tiempos de ejecución y número de errores más reducidos y menor número de ensayos para alcanzar el criterio de adquisi-ción. Sin embargo, estas diferencias de sexo no se dieron en todos los laberintos, manifestándose principal-mente en los laberintos fáciles pero no en los difíciles. Se discuten posibles explicaciones a las diferencias entre machos y hembras en el aprendizaje de los laberintos en función de su dificultad, concluyéndose que la categorización de la dificultad de los laberintos es dependiente del sexo. Escritos de Psicología Psychological WritingsAbstract The Hebb-Williams Maze is a test used to evaluate spatial learning in animals. Although sex differences in spatial ability have been observed in numerous species (males typically outperform females), inconclusive results have been obtained in the few studies that have used this test to assess male and female animals. This study investigated whether male OF1 mice performed better than OF1 mice on the Hebb-Williams Maze and whether any advantage was independent of the difficulty of the maze. We used a reduced version for mice, which consists of 5 mazes (3 easy and 2 difficult). In general, the results suggest that male mice performed better than female mice. The male mice showed shorter runtimes, a smaller number of errors, and fewer attempts to reach the criterion of acquisition. However, these sex differences were mainly found in the easy mazes but not in the difficult ones. We discuss the explanations for these differences in learning mazes based on their difficulty and conclude that the categorization of the difficulty of the mazes is sex-dependent.

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Enduring effects of environmental enrichment from weaning to adulthood on pituitary-adrenal function, pre-pulse inhibition and learning in male and female rats

Cited by 104 publications

References 89 publications

Sex differences in the behavioural and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal response to contextual fear conditioning in rats

Sex differences in the behavioural and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal response to contextual fear conditioning in rats

Differential effects of environmental enrichment and isolation housing on the hormonal and neurochemical responses to stress in the prefrontal cortex of the adult rat: relationship to working and emotional memories

Diferencias sexuales en el aprendizaje del Laberinto Hebb-Williams con ratones OF1

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