People with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) exhibit striking deficits in social behavior; these alterations in social behavior are independent of changes in intelligence and may be very damaging with respect to day-to-day functioning. The goal of this proposal is to use a model of FAS in which the rat is exposed to alcohol during development to investigate the mechanism by which alcohol alters social behaviors in the rat. The model that is used is novel and exposes rats to alcohol during all three trimester equivalents or, in other words, during both the prenatal and postnatal periods. The first set of experiments characterizes the model by comparing the effects of alcohol exposure during both the prenatal and postnatal period to exposure during the first half of the prenatal period alone, the second half of the prenatal period alone, and the postnatal period alone on activity, passive avoidance learning and spatial learning. After characterizing the model in the first year, the next two years examine the effect of alcohol exposure during development on social motivation. The second set of experiments focuses on the social motivation in an affiliative context. The experiments use distress vocalizations under different conditions of isolation, running speed to gain access to a conspecific after varying degrees of social deprivation, and social preference for conspecifics with different levels of aggressiveness. The third set of experiments examines social motivation in an aggressive context using the resident/intruder paradigm for both males and females; the motivation is varied by changing the context in which the aggression occurs. All of the experiments on social motivation use the additive factors technique to tease apart effects on motivation from effects on perception or the response mechanism; generally this technique examines the behavior under varying degrees of motivation and predicts that if groups differ in social motivation, then they will differ in how their behavior is altered by alterations in the level of social motivation. Female rats exposed to alcohol during development are predicted to have enhanced social motivation whereas male rats exposed to alcohol during development are predicted to have deceased social motivation.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
1R01AA011566-01A1
Application #
2599278
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG4-ALTX-3 (01))
Project Start
1998-04-08
Project End
2001-03-31
Budget Start
1998-04-08
Budget End
1999-03-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
1998
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of South Carolina at Columbia
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
111310249
City
Columbia
State
SC
Country
United States
Zip Code
29208
Macht, Victoria A; Kelly, Sandra J; Gass, Justin T (2017) Sex-specific effects of developmental alcohol exposure on cocaine-induced place preference in adulthood. Behav Brain Res 332:259-268
Perkins, Amy E; Fadel, Jim R; Kelly, Sandra J (2015) The effects of postnatal alcohol exposure and galantamine on the context pre-exposure facilitation effect and acetylcholine efflux using in vivo microdialysis. Alcohol 49:193-205
Perkins, Amy; Lehmann, Claudia; Lawrence, R Charles et al. (2013) Alcohol exposure during development: Impact on the epigenome. Int J Dev Neurosci 31:391-7
Otero, Nicha K H; Thomas, Jennifer D; Saski, Christopher A et al. (2012) Choline supplementation and DNA methylation in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex of rats exposed to alcohol during development. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 36:1701-9
Lawrence, R Charles; Otero, Nicha K H; Kelly, Sandra J (2012) Selective effects of perinatal ethanol exposure in medial prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens. Neurotoxicol Teratol 34:128-35
Kelly, Sandra J; Goodlett, Charles R; Hannigan, John H (2009) Animal models of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders: impact of the social environment. Dev Disabil Res Rev 15:200-8
Newsom, R J; Kelly, S J (2008) Perinatal delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol exposure disrupts social and open field behavior in adult male rats. Neurotoxicol Teratol 30:213-9
Charles Lawrence, R; Cale Bonner, H; Newsom, Ryan J et al. (2008) Effects of alcohol exposure during development on play behavior and c-Fos expression in response to play behavior. Behav Brain Res 188:209-18
Lugo Jr, Joaquin N; Wilson, Marlene A; Kelly, Sandra J (2006) Perinatal ethanol exposure alters met-enkephalin levels of male and female rats. Neurotoxicol Teratol 28:238-44
Lugo Jr, Joaquin N; Marino, Melissa D; Gass, Justin T et al. (2006) Ethanol exposure during development reduces resident aggression and testosterone in rats. Physiol Behav 87:330-7

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