ENVIRONMENTAL ENRICHMENT PREVENTS COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT AND IMPROVES STRESS-REACTIVITY IN PRENATALLY-STRESSED MICE

ZORRILLA ZUBILETE MA; RAMBORGER, ME; ACOSTA, GB; GUELMAN LR

Cancún

Congreso; 6th international Symposium on Metabolic Programming and Microbiome and 3rd Meeting of Ibero-American DOHaD chapter; 2018

International Society of (DOHAD) Developmental Origins of Health and Disease

Maternal stress during pregnancy can have far-reaching consequences for the offspring, which can last into adulthood.Prenatal stress (PS) has a ?Programming Effect? over the Hypothalamic?pituitary?adrenal (HPA) axis, with concomitant alterations of memory, stress reactivity, and corticosterone levels. Environmental Enrichment (EE) has been associated with increased hippocampal neurogenesis and decreased stress and fear responses.We aim to determine if an environmental enrichment treatment could revert thebehavioral and cognitive alterations induced by prenatal stress.Primiparous dams were either undisturbed until delivery (C) or subjectedto restraint stress, 2hs/day, from GD14 to GD21. Offspring remainedundisturbed until weaning at PN21, when they were either housed instandard cages (C and PS) or environmental enrichment houses (EE andPS + EE). Animals were left undisturbed until PD90, when they underwentbehavioral testing (Elevated Plus-Maze and Object-in-Place) and sacrifice.Results show that Enriched environment can revert prenatal stress-induced alterations in:? Anxiety-like behavior (♂ & ♀)? Contextual memory (♂ & ♀)? Hippocampal GR expression (♀)? Hippocampal BDNF expression (♀)? Plasmatic corticosterone Levels (♀)