Ricceri L, Scattoni ML, Calamandrei G (2001) Neonatal cholinergic lesions alter reactivity to a GABAergic agonist in 18-day-old rats. Neuroscience 2001 Abstracts 541.14. Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA.
Summary: We have shown previously that neonatal intracerebroventricular (icv) injections of the selective cholinergic immunotoxin 192 IgG-saporin on postnatal day (pnd) 7induces learning impairments on pnd 15 and disruption of reactivity to spatial novelty on pnd 54. The same neonatal treatment also induces a permanent cholinergic loss in both hippocampus and neocortex. In the present study we analyzed behavioral effects induced by a GABAergic drug (muscimol, a GABAa receptor agonist) in rats neonatally lesioned with 192 IgG-saporin (icv on pnd 7). On pnd 18 192 IgG-saporin lesioned and sham rats were injected with muscimol (0.1, 0.5 mg/kg ip) and placed in an open field arena for 20 min; locomotion, wall rearing and rearing responses were measured. In sham animals, as expected, 0.1 muscimol decreased locomotion, wall rearing and rearing responses. In saporin lesioned animals 0.1 muscimol increased locomotion, left wall rearing responses unchanged and decreased only rearing responses. In a 60s hot-plate test, 0.1 muscimol induced comparable analgesic responses in both sham and saporin-lesioned animals. The 0.5 muscimol dose resulted cataleptic for both saporin and sham lesioned rats. Neonatal saporin per se also reduced wall rearing and rearing responses. These data suggest that only in selective behavioral patterns — associated with locomotion and exploration of the environment — reactivity to a GABAergic agonist is reduced following neonatal cholinergic lesions, probably because of a decrease of GABAa receptors in the medial septal nucleus.
Related Products: 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01)