Both clinical and animal data suggest that gestational cocaine exposure may be related to adverse outcomes in the offspring. Although physical malformations have been reported following prenatal cocaine exposure, the most worrisome consequences are those involving central nervous system dysfunctions. The available evidence suggests that children exposed to cocaine in utero are at risk for neurobehavioral problems which may persist into adulthood. In this proposal we outline experiments designed to assess the behavioral consequences of prenatal exposure to cocaine using a rat model. The model employed involves the subcutaneous administration of cocaine (40 or 10 mg/kg) from gestation day 8 through gestation day 21. Both pairfed and ad lib lab chow controls are used to determine any effects of altered nutritional intake. The offspring from these various prenatal treatment conditions will be tested in a number of behavioral paradigms. Specifically, we will appraise the extent to which prenatal exposure to cocaine results in neurobehavioral abnormalities with an emphasis on the development of attention, learning, memory, and information integration skills. By assessing the development of cognitive processes we should be able to ascertain whether compensatory mechanisms emerge with maturation of the central nervous system. Studies conducted in our laboratory, as well as by others, indicate that the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure are relatively complex, subtle, and difficult to discern with tests frequently employed in behavioral teratology screens. The results suggest that perhaps only very challenging tests of attention, learning, and memory will be able to sort through this complexity and that both preweanling and adult animals will need to be assessed. While the present proposal is oriented towards an assessment of the ontogeny of cognition in animal subjects, the outcome of these studies will be appropriate to a discussion of the cognitive abilities/deficits of humans prenatally exposed to cocaine and may lead to improved methods of detecting and treating these dysfunctions in humans.
