Enriched environment treatment restores impaired hippocampal synaptic plasticity and cognitive deficits induced by prenatal chronic stress

Environmental Enrichment Restores Memory Functioning in Mice with Impaired IL-1 Signaling via Reinstatement of Long-Term Potentiation and Spine Size Enlargement

“…The findings that environmental enrichment restored LTP in IL-1rKO mice, and strengthened LTP in their WT controls, are consistent with previous reports on the beneficial effects of environmental enrichment on hippocampal LTP in normal animals (Duffy et al, 2001;Huang et al, 2006;Li et al, 2006), even 3-5 weeks after the cessation of enrichment and transfer back to normal conditions (Artola et al, 2006), and its ability to restore impaired LTP (Yang et al, 2007). The results of the present study provide the first demonstration of the ability of environmental enrichment to facilitate LTP in normal animals and to restore impaired LTP in the dentate gyrus in vivo.…”

Unraveling the Time Domains of Corticosteroid Hormone Influences on Brain Activity: Rapid, Slow, and Chronic Modes

“…More severe conditions, though, are consistently linked with reduced synaptic plasticity. This is true for prenatal stress (Kamphuis et al, 2003;Son et al, 2006;Yang et al, 2006Yang et al, , 2007Lee et al, 2011a;Yeh et al, 2012;but see Noorlander et al, 2008), low and/or fragmented maternal care including situations associated with impoverished environmental conditions (Bredy et al, 2003;Brunson et al, 2005;Cui et al, 2006;Champagne et al, 2008;Bagot et al, 2009Bagot et al, , 2012Ivy et al, 2010), prolonged maternal separation (Gruss et al, 2008;Stevenson et al, 2008;Oomen et al, 2010), or traumatic events (Akers et al, 2006;Judo et al, 2010). When investigated, basal synaptic properties or paired pulse responsiveness were not much altered (Domenici et al, 1996;Kamphuis et al, 2003;Yaka et al, 2007;Lee et al, 2011).…”

“…In other words, optimal performance in (young) adulthood is seen when the environment early and later in life match Oitzl et al, 2010;Nederhof and Schmidt, 2012). There are several examples regarding the link between electrical activity and behavioral performance to support the relevance of a matching beneficial environment or a mismatch in the case of early-life adversity (Kamphuis et al, 2003;Akers et al, 2006;Lin et al, 2006;Son et al, 2006;Yang et al, 2006Yang et al, , 2007Judo et al, 2010;Lee et al, 2011a; but see Domenici et al, 1996;Noorlander et al, 2008), but very few studies so far have supplied evidence for the importance of a mismatch in animals without early-life stress or a match in animals with a "bad start in life" (Stewart et al, 2004;Champagne et al, 2008;Bagot et al, 2009;Oomen et al, 2010).…”

Amygdala, Childhood Adversity and Psychiatric Disorders

“…More importantly, a few studies have shown that amygdala abnormality as a result of adversity may be irreversible, i.e., amygdala cellular growth in response to stress failed to recover even in reversed environment [51,52]. It is possible that during evolution an "over-cautious" mechanism has been adapted to ensure the organism to be prepared for future adversity in an environment that is known to be threatening.…”