LONG TERM RECOVERY FROM BEHAVIORAL ALTERATIONS INDUCED BY EXPOSURE TO MODERATE NOISE LEVELS

URAN, SL; CACERES, LG; GUELMAN, LR

Huerta Grande, Córdoba

Congreso; XXVIII Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (SAN); 2013

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (SAN)

Previous findings of our laboratory demonstrated that noise-exposed developing rats undergo extra-auditory behavioral alterations, mainly related to the hippocampus (HC) when evaluated 30 days after exposure. The aim of this work was to reveal if these changes persist until adulthood (90-days-old rats). Male Wistar rats were exposed to white noise (95?97 dB SPL, 2 h daily) either for 1 day (acute noise exposure, ANE) or between postnatal days 15-30 (sub-acute noise exposure, SANE). 90-days-old animals were subjected to open field test (OF) to evaluate habituation memory, object recognition task (OR) to evaluate recognition memory and inhibitory avoidance device (IA) to evaluate associative memory, at short (ST, 1h intertrial) and long term (LT, 24h intertrial). Results showed that exposure to moderate noise levels induced impairments in memory habituation of 30-days-old animals only at LT, which disappeared at 90 days. In addition, a deficit in ST and LT object recognition memory was observed a 30 days, that returned to control values at 90 days. Finally, SANE produced impairments in the performance in the IA test in 30-days-old animals at ST and LT, which were completely restored at 90 days. These data suggest that exposure of developing rats to noise levels of moderate intensity (95?97 dB SPL) is able to trigger changes in memory processes depending on the HC that seem to be temporary.