Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research
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Alcohol. Clin. Exp. Res. · Jul 2012
Housing in environmental complexity following wheel running augments survival of newly generated hippocampal neurons in a rat model of binge alcohol exposure during the third trimester equivalent.
Binge-like alcohol exposure in neonatal rats during the brain growth spurt causes deficits in adult neurogenesis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG). Previous data from our laboratory demonstrated that 12 days of voluntary wheel running (WR) beginning on postnatal day (PD) 30 significantly increased the number of newly generated cells evident in the DG on PD42 in both alcohol-exposed (AE) and control rats, but 30 days later a sustained beneficial effect of WR was evident only in control rats. This study tested the hypothesis that housing rats in environmental complexity (EC) following WR would promote the survival of the newly generated cells stimulated by WR, particularly in AE rats. ⋯ WR followed by EC could provide a behavioral model for developing interventions in humans to ameliorate hippocampal-dependent impairments associated with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.