Federal and state governments have a responsibility to provide education which is tailored to the ability of each individual child. With a prevalence of cocaine abuse among pregnant women, it is critical to determine if their exposed children exhibit learning and/or memory deficits that would require special educational attention. The validity of human studies is compromised by confounding variables which are difficult to control for. The main objective of this project is to generate an animal-learning preparation which institutes complicated learning tasks that could target the teratogenic effects of cocaine exposure and be adapted for human screening purposes. Gravid dams will be randomly assigned to either a low-dose cocaine treatment group, a high- dose cocaine treatment group, a vehicle and pair-fed control group, or an untreated control group to determine if adult offspring of the cocaine- treated dams show a learning deficit.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Type
Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31)
Project #
5F31DA005759-03
Application #
2749050
Study Section
Human Development Research Subcommittee (NIDA)
Project Start
1998-07-10
Project End
Budget Start
1998-07-10
Budget End
1999-05-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
1998
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Department
Biology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
153223151
City
Amherst
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
01003
Brunzell, Darlene H; Coy, Abigail E; Ayres, John J B et al. (2002) Prenatal cocaine effects on fear conditioning: exaggeration of sex-dependent context extinction. Neurotoxicol Teratol 24:161-72
Brunzell, Darlene H; Ayres, John J B; Meyer, Jerrold S (2002) Effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on latent inhibition in 1-year-old female rats. Pharmacol Biochem Behav 72:795-802