| Abstract No.: | A-A1007 |
| Country: | Canada |
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| Title: | ENVIRONMENTAL ENRICHMENT REVERSES THE EFFECT OF MATERNAL CARE ON GLUTAMIC ACID DECARBOXYLASE 1 EXPRESSION IN THE HIPPOCAMPUS IN RATS. |
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| Authors/Affiliations: | 1 Tieyuan Zhang*; 1 Rosemary Bagot; 1 Michael J Meaney;
1 Douglas Mental Health University Institute, McGill University; Montreal, QC, Canada
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| Content: | Objectives: The quality of the early family environment predicts the risk for multiple forms of psychopathology, including schizophrenia. Decreased expression of glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD), the rate-limiting enzyme in the formation of GABA, in cortical interneurons has been reported in schizophrenic patients. In animals, we found that adult offspring of Low-licking/grooming (L/G) mothers show impairment of sensorimotor gating as measured by pre-pulse inhibition (PPI). Environmental enrichment in the peri-pubertal period completely eliminates the effect of maternal care on Morris water maze learning and memory but not contextual fear conditioning.
Materials & Methods: In this study, we used quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (QRT-PCR) and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) to examine whether environmental enrichment could reverse the maternal effect on the GABA system as reflected by GAD regulation.
Results: The results showed that environmental enrichment from days 22 to 70 of life can reverse these effects in the hippocampus but not in the frontal cortex. ChIP results showed that GAD1 expression is highly correlated with the level of NGFI-A binding to the GAD1 promoter and enrichment significantly enhanced this binding activity in the hippocampus in the Low-LG offspring. However, the difference in hippocampal GR exon1-7 message level was not reversed by enrichment.
Conclusions: These results suggest that environmental enrichment can reverse the epigenetic effect of maternal care in a region and system specific manner.
Supported by NARSAD.
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