Cocaine exposure during pregnancy can impact brain development and have long-term behavioral consequences. The present study examined the lasting consequences of prenatal cocaine (PN-COC) exposure on the performance of cognitive tasks and dendritic spine density in adult male and female rats. From gestational day 8 to 20, dams were treated daily with 30 mg/kg (ip) of cocaine HCl or saline. At 62 days of age, offspring were tested consecutively for anxiety, locomotion, visual memory and spatial memory. PN-COC exposure significantly increased anxiety in both sexes. Object recognition (OR) and placement (OP) tasks were used to assess cognitive function. Behavioral tests consisted of an exploration trial (T1) and a recognition trial (T2) that were separated by an inter-trial delay of varying lengths. Male PN-COC subjects displayed significantly less time investigating new objects or object location during T2 in both OR and OP tasks. By contrast, female PN-COC subjects exhibited impairments only in OR and only at the longest inter-trial delay interval. In addition, gestational cocaine increased dendritic spine density in the prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens in both genders, but only females had increased spine density in the CA1 region of the hippocampus. These data reveal that in-utero exposure to cocaine results in enduring alterations in anxiety, cognitive function and spine density in adulthood. Moreover, cognitive deficits were more profound in males than in females. Keywords sex differences; synaptic plasticity; prefrontal cortex; hippocampus; visual memory; spatial memory Cocaine abuse during pregnancy is recognized as a major social problem (G. A. Richardson, 1998; L. T. Singer et al., 2002). Clinical reports reveal an adverse relationship between Corresponding Author: Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, 138th St and Convent Ave, New York, NY 10031, Tel: 212-650-8255; Fax: 212-650-7726; ksalasram@ccny.cuny.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
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Author ManuscriptNeuroscience. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 September 1. Less is known about gender-specific effects of gestational cocaine exposure, even though the effects of cocaine exposure in adulthood are sex-dependent in both rodents and humans (S. M. Evans and R. W. Foltin, 2009). For example, adult female subjects self-administer psychostimulants at lower doses than do males, drug use escalates more rapidly to dependence, and females are at greater risk for relapse following withdrawal than males (J. B. Becker and M. Hu, 2008). Fe...
