Linked Life Data

17367828

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/17367828

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
1
pubmed:dateCreated
2007-4-27
pubmed:abstractText
Diseases involving cognitive disorders and maladaptive stress-coping behaviors including autism and schizophrenia are present in children born to mothers exposed to stress during pregnancy. To determine the gestational time window when stress exposure produces the greatest impact on cognition, dams were exposed to chronic variable stress (CVS) early, mid-, or late in gestation and offspring learning performance and navigation strategies assessed. These studies utilized a modified version of the Barnes maze to allow investigation of coping responses to stress stimuli. In our study, males exposed to early gestational stress showed significantly impaired learning performance, requiring twice as long to locate the target following training. In stark contrast, early prenatal stress enhanced female performance, where these females located the target in a quarter of the time required by controls. Differences in search strategies whether cued, random, or serial accounted for divergent performances between sex and CVS groups. While control males' behavior expectedly evolved to a cued strategy, the early stressed offspring continued to rely on serial and random searching. Surprisingly, in a long-term memory recall test 6 weeks following previous maze exposure, these early stressed offspring now located the target significantly faster than controls suggesting gestational effects of stress on memory retention that were specific to prenatal time window of stress exposure. Overall, these results provide important insight into the temporal specificity of the effects of prenatal CVS revealing a remarkable vulnerability during early development and a sexually dichotomous influence on cognitive abilities and stress-coping strategies.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
May
pubmed:issn
0031-9384
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:day
16
pubmed:volume
91
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
55-65
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2007
pubmed:articleTitle
Early prenatal stress impact on coping strategies and learning performance is sex dependent.
pubmed:affiliation
Department of Animal Biology, University of Pennsylvania, 201E Vet School, 3800 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States.
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article