Social Isolation during adolescence enhanced cocaine stimulant effects in youth rats

BIOLATTO, SILVANA; CUESTA, SANTIAGO; PACCHIONI, ALEJANDRA M

Huerta Grande, Cordoba

Congreso; XXVI Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigaciones en Neurociencias; 2011

Sociedad Argentina de Investigaciones en Neurociencias

Functional brain differences between adolescents and adults, in a variety of species, may explain in part adolescents’ typical behaviors such as novelty seeking and their higher vulnerability to stressful situations. Adolescent rats show a higher level of social interaction with their kind around post natal day (PND) 28-35, and it has been shown that 5 days of social isolation during this period induced molecular changes in the prefrontal cortex that last until adulthood. In adult rats stress enhances cocaine stimulants effects; however it is not known if isolation during adolescence has long term effects on cocaine stimulant properties. Therefore, our main goal was to evaluate whether isolation during adolescence increases cocaine locomotor response in young rats. Male Wistar rats on PND 30 were individually housed for 5 days, while control rats remained group housed. Between PND 60 and 67 all rats received 4 cocaine injections and locomotor response was measured for 20 min. A dose response curve (0, 1, 5, 10 mg/kg ip) showed that social isolation enhances the induction of sensitization with the lower dose without altering the acute response. The data presented here supports the idea that isolation stress during adolescence increases cocaine vulnerability in youth rats.