• Hideaki Nishie, Ryouhei Miyata, Ryu Fujikawa, Ken-ichi Kinoshita, Yoshikage Muroi, and Toshiaki Ishii.
• Department of Basic Veterinary Medicine, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Obihiro, Hokkaido 080-8555, Japan.
• Neurosci. Res. 2012 Aug 1;73(4):292-301.

AbstractPreviously, we have found that post-weaning mice fed exclusively milk display low-frequency exploratory behavior compared to mice fed a food pellet diet (Ishii et al., 2005a). Because cognitive functions play a key role in animal exploration, in the present study we examined the effect of an exclusively milk formula diet on spatial learning and memory in a water maze and also on induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) at the Schaffer collateral-CA1 synapse in the hippocampus. Exclusively milk-fed mice exhibited slower learning and memory deficits in hidden water maze tests as compared with pellet-fed mice. Moreover, milk-fed mice showed a significant inhibition of LTD but a normal induction of LTP. Despite these functional deficits, adult neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, which has been proposed to have a causal relationship to spatial memory, was stimulated in milk-fed mice. These result suggest that an exclusively milk formula diet after weaning leads to a stimulation of hippocampal neurogenesis but causes deficits in the induction of LTD in the CA1 hippocampal region and impairment of spatial learning and memory.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd and the Japan Neuroscience Society. All rights reserved.

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