Perinatal protein malnutrition induced anhedonia is associated to a reduced hippocampal dendritic spine density and BDNF levels in the adult offspring.

MARÍA CECILIA GUTIÉRREZ; , RÍA CECILIA PERONDI; RAMIRO COMAS M UTIS; GABRIEL CUADRA; CALFA, GASTÓN DIEGO; ANALÍA VALDOMERO

Congreso; XXXIV Annual Meeting of the Argentine Society for Research in Neuroscience; 2019

Growing evidence indicates that depression is closely related to neuronalmorphological alterations in specific brain areas. In addition, brain derivedneurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays a key r ole in the structural plasticity induced bysuch disorder. In order to investi gate neurobiological substrates linked with earlyprotein undernutrition facilitated depressive like behaviours, we studied the impactof nutritional insult on the dendritic spin e de nsity at CA1 hippocampal neurons andBDNF levels in this brain area. Thus, adult animals submitted to a perinatal proteindeprivation schedule (D rats) and well nourished animals (C rats) were exposed tothe sucrose preference test, a paradigm usually empl oyed to evaluate anhedonia.After the test, different groups of C and D r ats were perfused for dendritic spineanalysis or sacrificed for BDNF levels quantification. According to previous results,D rats showed a significant reduction of sucrose prefe renc e compared to C rats.Furthermore, D animals elicited a lower density of t otal dendritic spines,particularly mature ones, which was correlated with decreased levels of BDNF inthe hippocampus. These results suggest that morphological and molecularalt erat ions in the hippocampus of malnourished animals may contribute to a lowerability to cope with appetitive stimuli.