Maternal immune activation in rats produces temporal perception impairments in adult offspring analogous to those observed in schizophrenia

• Published in: PloS one 2017-11, Vol.12 (11), p.e0187719-e0187719
• Main Authors: Deane, Ashley R, Millar, Jessica, Bilkey, David K, Ward, Ryan D
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accuracy; Activation; Analysis; Animal cognition; Animal models; Animals; Biology and Life Sciences; Cognitive ability; Cognitive disorders; Epidemiology; Etiology; Experiments; Female; Food; Health aspects; Humans; Immune response; Information processing; Medicine and Health Sciences; Memory; Mental disorders; Methamphetamine; Neurophysiology; Neurosciences; Offspring; Parameter sensitivity; Patients; Perception; Perception (Psychology); Physical Sciences; Pregnancy; Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects; Psychiatric patients; Psychology; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Research and Analysis Methods; Risk factors; Rodents; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenia - physiopathology; Social Sciences; Temporal perception; Time Perception
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187719

The neurophysiology underlying temporal perception significantly overlaps with areas of dysfunction identified in schizophrenia. Patients commonly exhibit distorted temporal perception, which likely contributes to functional impairments. Thus, study of temporal perception in animal models of the disease may help to understand both cognitive and neurobiological factors involved in functional impairments in patients. As maternal immune activation (MIA) has been shown to be a significant etiological risk factor in development of schizophrenia and other developmental psychiatric diseases, we tested interval timing in a rat model of MIA that has previously been shown to recapitulate several behavioural and neurophysiological impairments observed in the disease. Rats were tested on a temporal-bisection task, in which temporal duration stimuli were categorized as either "short" or "long" by responding to a corresponding lever. Data from this task were modeled to provide estimates of accuracy and sensitivity of temporal perception. Parameter estimates derived from the model fitting showed that MIA rats significantly overestimated the passage of time compared to controls. These results indicate that the MIA rat paradigm recapitulates timing distortions that are phenotypical of schizophrenia. These findings lend further support to the epidemiological validity of this MIA rat model, supporting its relevance for future research into the role of maternal immune activation in producing neurobiological and behavioural impairments in schizophrenia.