Impaired response to novelty and motor behaviour in the D-Gal rat model of accelerated aging.
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1
Institute of Biosystems and Integrative Sciences (BioISI), Portugal
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2
Institute of Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Aging causes multiple physiological changes like cognitive decline, sympathoexcitation, impaired motor function and enhanced susceptibility to oxidative damage. We evaluated the relation between motor function, cognitive performance and selective synaptic markers in a rat model of accelerated aging (AA).
AA was induced in 12-week-old male Wistar rats by D-galactose (250 mg/Kg) administration for 40 days and compared to Sham (saline injections) and 12-month old (natural aging) rats. The behavioural evaluation was performed with the open-field test1 for locomotion and exploratory traits, with the rotarod for motor performance, with elevated plus maze test for anxiety, and with the water maze for spatial memory acquisition. Novelty response was evaluated in the holeboard with objects for responses to spatial mismatch novelty2 and by the novel object recognition test3 for non-spatial novelty. Hippocampal expression of tyrosine hydroxilase (TH), flotilin and caveolin in hippocampal membranes was evaluated by western blot.
AA rats showed decreased body weight, impaired exploration and motor performance, and mild cognitive impairment compared to sham controls but not so pronounced as naturally aged rats. Responses to spatial novelty were also impaired in AA rats but not responses to presentation of novel objects. AA rats did not show anxious behaviour when compared to Sham controls.
Altogether this suggests that the changes observed in this model are not irreversible and do not fully reproduce the physiological responses to aging.
Acknowledgements
Supported by FCT (SFRH/ BPD/81358/2011; PTDC/SAU-PUB/28311/2017).
References
1- Crusio et al. Behav Brain Res, 1989, 32:75; 2-Goh et al., Cereb Cortex, 2013, 23:129; 3-Goh et al., Cereb Cortex 2013 23:1118.
Keywords:
Aging,
Hippocampus,
novelty,
Learning,
Dopamine
Conference:
XVI Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Neuroscience (SPN2019), Lisboa, Portugal, 30 May - 1 Jun, 2019.
Presentation Type:
Poster presentation
Topic:
Neurodegeneration / Physiological Aging Brain
Citation:
Vila-Verde
B,
Reis-Borges
D,
Nascimento
C and
Cunha-Reis
D
(2019). Impaired response to novelty and motor behaviour in the D-Gal rat model of accelerated aging..
Front. Cell. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
XVI Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Neuroscience (SPN2019).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fncel.2019.01.00002
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Received:
27 Feb 2019;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Ms. Beatriz Vila-Verde, Institute of Biosystems and Integrative Sciences (BioISI), Lisbon, 1749-016, Portugal, beatriz.vilaverdes@gmail.com
Dr. Diana Cunha-Reis, Institute of Biosystems and Integrative Sciences (BioISI), Lisbon, 1749-016, Portugal, dcreis@fc.ul.pt