Publication: Effects of long-term individual housing of middle-aged female Octodon degus on spatial learning and memory in the Barnes maze task
Authors
Baño-Otalora, Beatriz ; Rol, María Ángeles ; Venero, César ; Madrid, Juan Antonio ; Popovic, Natalija ; Popovic Popovic, Miroljub
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Publisher
Frontiers Media
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1221090
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info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Description
©2023 Popović, Baño-Otalora, Rol, Venero, Madrid and Popović. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. This document is the Published version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1221090
Abstract
Prolonged social isolation is a form of passive chronic stress that has consequences on human and animal behavior. The present study was undertaken to elucidate whether the long-term isolation would precipitate age-related changes in anxiety and spatial learning and memory in degus.
Methods: We investigated the effects of long-term social isolation on anxiety levels in the light-dark test, and spatial orientation abilities in the Barnes maze. Middle-aged female Octodon degus were allocated to either group-housed (3 animals per cage) or individually-housed for 5 months.
Results: Under this experimental condition, there were no significant group differences in the anxiety level tested in the light-dark test and in the motivation to escape from the Barnes maze. There were no significant differences in cortisol levels between individually- and group-housed animals. On the last acquisition training day of spatial learning, individually- housed animals had a significantly higher number of correct responses and a smaller number of reference and working memory errors than the group-housed animals. In addition, isolated animals showed a tendency for reference and working memory impairment on the retention trial, while group-housed degus showed improvement in these parameters.
Discussion and conclusion: The present study indicates that prolonged social isolation during adulthood in female degus has a dual effect on spatial orientation. Specifically, it results in a significant improvement in acquisition skills but a slight impairment in memory retention. The obtained cognitive changes were not accompanied by modification in anxiety and cortisol levels.
Keywords: Barnes maze; Octodon degus; anxiety; learning and memory; light-dark test; social isolation.
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Citation
Front. Behav. Neurosci. 2023 17:1221090
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