Peers can rescue autism-related behaviors and glucose brain metabolism after prenatal exposure to valproic acid

GERMÁN FALASCO; NADIA KAZLAUSKAS; AMAICHA DEPINO; MARCOS CAMPOLONGO; LEANDRO URRUTIA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 2nd Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Neuroscience Societies Congress 2016; 2016

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterizedby poor social interaction. Symptoms appear in earlylife and persist in adulthood. At present, there are noeffective treatments and the mechanisms by which theyact are unknown. Our aim is to analyze the effects of earlysocial stimulation on autism-related behavior and itsconsequences in molecular and cellular pathways thatcould be altered in autism.It was previously shown that mice exposed to valproicacid (VPA) at gestational day 12.5 show reduced socialinteraction in adulthood. Here, we found that this effect isnot observed when VPA animals live with control animalsbetween postnatal day (P)21 to P60, then receiving normalsocial stimulation during this period. This treatment canthen rescue at least some of the behavioral alterationsobserved in our model.We aimed then to study the critical period when behavioralalterations appear, which are the brain regions involved inthe social interaction among peers, and which effect couldhave social stimulation on both.We used PET imaging for an unbiased analysis of the wholebrain and we found that VPA animals present high levels ofmetabolism in basal conditions, in the piriform cortex andanterior olfactory nucleus, both involved in social behaviorin mice. This effect is reversed after social stimulation. As apotential mechanism for changes in neuronal function,we are using transgenic Thy1-GFP mice exposed to VPA tostudy spine density in the hippocampus.