Abstract

LEON RODRIGUEZ, DIEGO ARMANDO  and  DUENAS GOMEZ, ZULMA JANETH. Effects of Early Maternal Separation on The Performance in the Elevated Plus Maze in Adult Rats. Acta biol.Colomb. [online]. 2012, vol.17, n.1, pp.129-142. ISSN 0120-548X.

It has been demonstrated that disruption of mother-pup interaction during early life exerts long-lasting effects on the brain and behavioral development. Therefore subjects exposed to early maternal separation stress (MS) show variations in anxiety-like behaviors. The aim of this study was to investigate the specific effects of SMT stress on anxiety-like behaviors in adult male and female Wistar rats. Rats were housed with reversed light dark cycle (light on at 7 p.m., off at 7 a.m.), water and food ad libitum. Separation was carried out in postnatal days 1 to 21, twice daily in dark cycle (7:00 a 10:00 y 13:00 a 16:00 p.m.). The anxiety-like behaviors were tested through the elevated plus maze (EPM) when the pups reached 230 g of weigh. We found that the MS stress has sex specific effects on anxiety-like behaviors: the maternal separated females displayed a lesser anxious outline than the not separated ones and the separated males showed a large exploration/avoidance conflict. These results confirm previous effects of our labs, which may be related to an interaction between vulnerability to environmental challenge and maternal care compensatory behaviors

Keywords : Maternal separation; stress; anxiety; HPA axis; elevated plus maze.

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