Behavioral alterations induced by intermittent ethanol intake and noise exposure in adolescent rats

BUJÁN, GUSTAVO EZEQUIEL; D?ALESSIO, LUCIANA; SERRA, HÉCTOR ALEJANDRO; MOLINA, SONIA JAZMÍN; GUELMAN, LAURA RUTH

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Año: 2022

0953-816X

Alcohol intake and exposure to noise are common activities of human adolescents performed in entertainment contexts worldwide that can induce behavioral disturbances. Therefore, the aim of the present work was to investigate in an experimental model of adolescent animals whether noise exposure and intermittent ethanol intake, when present individually or sequentially, might be able to modify different behaviors.Adolescent Wistar rats of both sexes were subjected to voluntary intermittent ethanol intake for 1 week followed by exposure to noise for 2 h and tested in a battery of behavioral tasks.Data show that males exposed to noise experienced a deficit in associative memory (AM), increase in anxiety-like behaviors (ALB) and altered reaction to novelty (RN) when compared with sham animals, whereas females also showed an increase in risk assessment behaviors (RAB) and a decrease in exploratory activity (EA). In contrast, ethanol intake induced an increase in RAB and RN in males and females, whereas females also showed a deficit in AM and EA as well as an increase in ALB. When ethanol was ingested before noise exposure, most parameters were counteracted both in male and females, but differed among sexes.In consequence, it could be hypothesized that an environmental acute stressor like noise might trigger a behavioral counteracting induced by a previous repeated exposure to a chemical agent such as ethanol, leading to a compensation of a non-adaptive behavior and reaching a better adjustment to the environment.