Publication: Social interaction of rats is related with baseline prepulse inhibition level
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Date
2014-09-01
Authors
Göktalay, Gökhan
Authors
Kayır, Hakan
Ulusoy, Kemal Gökhan
Uzbay, Tayfun
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
The symptoms of schizophrenia are evaluated in three general categories: positive, negative and cognitive symptoms. Disruption of prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the acoustic startle reflex is commonly used to model positive and cognitive symptoms in experimental animals. On the other hand, deficient social interaction (SI) is a common model of negative symptoms. Here we tested whether PPI provides information about negative symptoms by using a SI test. Baseline PPI and its relation with anxiety-like behavior were also examined with elevated plus maze (EPM) test. In the first experiment, baseline PPI levels of 30 Wistar rats were measured and animals with the highest 1/3 and the lowest 1/3 of PPI scores were respectively assigned in high-inhibitory (HI) and low-inhibitory (LI) groups. Subsequently, rats in the HI and LI groups were paired with animals from the same group and tested for SI. In the second experiment, another batch of animals was assigned to HI and LI groups and they were investigated in the EPM test. The results demonstrate a significant difference between the PPI values of HI and LI groups. Both the SI time and the moving distance of LI rats were significantly lower, and the average distance between rat pairs was significantly longer than HI rats. In the EPM test LI and HI rats showed similar levels of anxiety-like behaviors, however our results imply that performance of the rats in the SI test is related to baseline PPI levels. Thus PPI test can provide predictive information about the outcome of animal models for negative symptoms in rats. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Description
Keywords
Anxiety, Social withdrawal, Prepulse inhibition (PPI), Social interaction, Rat(s), Schizophrenia, Induced stereotyped behavior, Abnormalities, Possible animal-model, Startle, Negative symptoms, Deficits, Individual-differences, Nicotine, Schizophrenia, Withdrawal, Neurosciences & neurology
Citation
Göktalay, G. vd. (2014). "Social interaction of rats is related with baseline prepulse inhibition level". Neuroscience Letters, 582, 125-129.