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Environmental influences on brain and behavior of year‐old rats
Author(s) -
Riege Walter H.
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.420040207
Subject(s) - environmental enrichment , weanling , psychology , medicine , aché , endocrinology , acetylcholinesterase , physiology , zoology , neuroscience , chemistry , biology , biochemistry , enzyme
The brains of rats, almost a year old, were found to be similarly susceptible to the influences of differential housing as had been those of weanling rats. In 3 experiments, male S 1 rats, about 285 days of age, remained for 30, 60, or 90 days in enriched ( EC ), impoverished ( IC ), or standard colony ( SC ) conditions before sacrifice for measures of weights and enzymatic activities of standardized brain sections. Occipital and total cortical brain weights increased significantly after EC , whereas subcortical regions seemed to be resistant to environmental influences. Year‐old rats responded with greater cortical weight increases and enhanced occipital cholinesterase activities from a period of enrichment extended beyond 60 days than SC agemates. The cortices of IC rats, in contrast, showed a decline in weights with longer duration in isolation. Environmental enrichment, furthermore, disposed year‐old rats to faster learning in the Lashley III maze.