Moderate prenatal alcohol exposure impairs cognitive control, but not attention, on a rodent touchscreen continuous performance task

Abstract

A common feature associated with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders is the inability to concentrate on a specific task while ignoring distractions. Human continuous performance tasks (CPT), measure vigilance and cognitive control simultaneously while these processes are traditionally measured separately in rodents. We recently established a touchscreen 5‐choice CPT (5C‐CPT) that measures vigilance and cognitive control simultaneously by incorporating both target and nontargets and showed it was sensitive to amphetamine‐induced improvement in humans and mice. Here, we examined the effects of moderate prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) in male and female mice on performance of the 5‐choice serial reaction time task (5‐CSRTT), which contained only target trials, and the 5C‐CPT which incorporated both target and nontarget trials. In addition, we assessed gait and fine motor coordination in behavioral naïve PAE and control animals. We found that on the 5‐CSRTT mice were able to respond to target presentations with similar hit rates regardless of sex or treatment. However, on the 5C‐CPT PAE mice made significantly more false alarm responses vs controls. Compared with control animals, PAE mice had a significantly lower sensitivity index, a measure of ability to discriminate appropriate responses to stimuli types. During 5C‐CPT, female mice, regardless of treatment, also had increased mean latency to respond when correct and omitted more target trials. Gait assessment showed no significant differences in PAE and SAC mice on any measure. These findings suggest that moderate exposure to alcohol during development can have long lasting effects on cognitive control unaffected by gross motor alterations.

Moderate Prenatal Alcohol Exposure Impairs Visual‐Spatial Discrimination in a Sex‐Specific Manner: Effects of Testing Order and Difficulty on Learning Performance

“…We first showed that female mice had slower rates to acquire discrimination criterion versus males, although this was not different in PAE versus controls (Marquardt et al, 2014). More recently, we found that while PAE spared attention on a touchscreen 5‐choice Serial Reaction Time Task, PAE in general, and female PAE mice, in particular, had significantly increased false alarm responses to nontarget stimuli on the 5‐Choice Continuous Performance Task (Olguin et al, 2020). Across these studies, female animals consistently had elevated latencies both to respond to stimuli, and to retrieve reward, although these measures did not always reach significance.…”

Global loss of Neuron‐specific gene 1 causes alterations in motor coordination, increased anxiety, and diurnal hyperactivity in male mice

“…The CatwalkXT system (Noldus) was used to analyze gait and fine motor coordination according to methods previously described 24 . Mice were placed at one end of a 1.3 m glass runway and allowed to walk across to the other end to reach a dark goal box.…”

Dose-Related Reduction in Hippocampal Neuronal Populations in Fetal Alcohol Exposed Vervet Monkeys

“…Similar to the neuronal populations, a clear threshold could not be identified, but overlap between control and FAE values ceases at around 70 mg/dL BEC and 1.5 g EtOH/Kg/day. Although a specific threshold of FAE could not be determined, these data add to the growing evidence that low-to-moderate FAE results in compromised hippocampal functioning [ 47 , 48 ] affecting synaptic activity [ 47 ], connectivity [ 47 , 49 ], neurogenesis [ 50 ], and plasticity [ 51 , 52 ] with adverse learning and behavior [ 53 , 54 , 55 ].…”