Parenting experiences: impact on behavior and response to alcohol

MIRANDA MORALES RS; PASQUETTA LM; FERREYRA, E.A.

virtual

Congreso; II Virtual Meeting of the Latin America Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism, LASBRA 2022; 2022

Latin America Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism

Parental behavior during early development has a strong influence on the emotional and social development of infants. Literature on parenting, human or animal, has primarily focused on the interactions between mothers and offspring, with little research directed at understanding on what paternal behavior could add to infant social attachment. Strong ties or social attachment as pair bond formation in adult rodents has protective effects on neurodevelopment and against drug effects. In this sense, rearing conditions during early ontogeny may have differential effects infant development and drug experience. The present project analyzed if different parenting conditions (ie., single-mother -SM- or biparental care -BP-), in a non-monogamous mice strain (C57BL/6), may have a differential impact on the parenting during lactation, adolescent behavior and response to ethanol of the offspring. Or results evidenced that these two rearing conditions implied differential parental behavior during lactation period. In fact, SM condition induced an anxiety-like behavior and major alcohol consumption in adolescent offspring, compared to BP-animals. Moreover, these adolescents were more sensitive to ethanol-induce anxiolysis, and less sensitive to ethanol-induced motor activation. A neurobiological approach indicated that SM derived infants had great neural activation in brain areas related to anxiety behaviors as the amygdaloid circuit and this effect was increased by ethanol treatment. These results highlight the importance of parenting during a critical period of early development and the long-lasting effects of social experience.