Effects of Moderate Chronic Stressing of Female Rats Before and During Pregnancy of Sensorimotor Development, Anxiety Levels, and Cognitive Functions in Their Offspring

We report here studies of the effects of moderate unpredictable chronic stressing of female rats for two weeks before initiation of pregnancy and two weeks during pregnancy on the development of offspring from birth to age three months. The action of pregestational stress led to increased anxiety in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuroscience and behavioral physiology 2022-02, Vol.52 (2), p.251-261
Main Authors: Yakovleva, O. V., Bogatova, K. S., Skripnikova, V. V., Sitdikova, G. F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Behavioral Sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Body size
Body weight
Cognitive ability
Coordination
Exploratory behavior
Females
Lactation
Motor activity
Muscle strength
Neurobiology
Neurosciences
Offspring
Ontogeny
Pattern recognition
Pregnancy
Prenatal experience
Rodents
Sensorimotor system
Spatial discrimination learning
Spatial memory
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Summary:We report here studies of the effects of moderate unpredictable chronic stressing of female rats for two weeks before initiation of pregnancy and two weeks during pregnancy on the development of offspring from birth to age three months. The action of pregestational stress led to increased anxiety in females by the onset of pregnancy, which persisted into the first week of lactation. Prenatal stress led to decreases in litter size, reduced body weight, and delayed physical development and maturation of a number of sensorimotor refl exes in the fi rst two weeks after birth. Motor activity, decreased in the fi rst two weeks, recovered by day 26 of life (P), while changes in muscle strength and motor coordination were not seen in the rats. Decreases in exploratory activity and increases in anxiety levels were seen at all ages analyzed (P16, 26, 80). Impairments to learning processes and spatial and nonspatial memory were identifi ed in the Morris water maze test (P21–22) and the novel object recognition test (P72–90). Thus, our results provide evidence that moderate stressing of females before and during pregnancy led not only to impairments of physical and neurological development in early ontogeny, but also to increased levels of anxiety and cognitive dysfunctions, which persisted into adulthood in offspring animals.
ISSN:0097-0549
1573-899X
DOI:10.1007/s11055-022-01231-5