This project involves an animal model for the effects of fetal alcohol on aspects of development, such as abnormalities in emotional affect, hyperactivity, deficits in inhibitory capacity, and the occurrence of abnormally persistent or perseverative behavior. It is based on a large body of normative data from our laboratory demonstrating the ages of appearance in infancy (a) of heart-rate reactions and their habituation to a variety of stimuli, and (b) of a number of instrumental reward-schedule effects. It also addresses developmentally, in infant rats, several aspects of the relationship between hippocampal function and these specific behaviors. Work with adult animals has implicated the hippocampal formation in a number of these heart-rate and reward-schedule effects. Other work has shown severe effects of ethanol in utero on cell development in the hippocampus, particularly in the pyramidal cells of Ammon's horn, which arise prenatally. The project addresses the question: How do the teratogenic effects of fetal alcohol affect the ages of appearance of these discrepancy-related heart-rate and reward-schedule effects? Are there correlations between the effects of fetal alcohol on these autonomic and behavioral functions and on the degree of agenesis in pyramidal cells of the hippocampus?
| Diaz-Granados, J L; Spuhler-Phillips, K; Lilliquist, M W et al. (1997) Effects of prenatal and early postnatal ethanol exposure on [3H]MK-801 binding in rat cortex and hippocampus. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 21:874-81 |
