CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Autism is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by poor social interaction and communication, and by stereotyped or restricted behaviors. Symptoms appear in early childhood and persist in adulthood. Several clinical studies suggest early social stimulation as the most effective treatment of autism. We have previously shown that the prenatal exposure to valproic acid (VPA) results in reduced social interaction and other autism-related phenotypes in the adult offspring. In those experiments VPA-treated mice were weaned with other VPA mice. Here, we compared VPA mice weaned with VPA mice (VPA-VPA mice) with VPA-Saline groups (VPA-Sal), containing 2-3 VPA-exposed mice per cage along with 2-3 Saline mice. This design allowed VPA and Sal mice to interact in the home cage from postnatal day (P)21 to P60. At P60, VPA-Sal mice showed higher levels of sociability than VPA-VPA, showing that this treatment can rescue at least some of the behavioral alterations observed in our model. We will use this design to study what are the cellular and molecular changes that correlate with the autism-related phenotype and whether these or other pathways participate in the social rescue that we observe. To this aim, we are studying the inflammatory alterations, as we have previously found that VPA-treated mice have increased inflammatory responses in adulthood. In addition, we are characterizing the neuronal activation observed upon exposure to a novel object or to a social novelty.