Researcher(s)
- Grace Lyons, Neuroscience, University of Delaware
Faculty Mentor(s)
- Anna Klintsova, Psychology and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware
Abstract
Drinking during pregnancy could result in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). One of the most prevalent symptoms of FASD is impaired executive function, which is reliant on communication and connection between prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and midline thalamus. My research project investigates the effect of alcohol exposure (AE) on perineuronal nets (PNNs) in the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN), the primary driver of inhibitory action in the thalamus.
Long Evans rat pups were either administered alcohol mixed in milk formula on postnatal days 4-9 (5.25 g/kg/day) (AE rats) or were sham intubated (SI). Rats were then exposed to either a superintervention condition–a combination of voluntary wheel running followed by environmental complexity–or remained in a standard social housing cage. Coronally-sectioned brains were immunocytochemically stained using anti-NeuN and Wisteria Floribunda Agglutinin to identify neurons and PNNs, respectively. Images of TRN (rostro-caudal extension) were acquired using an epifluorescent microscope. The region of interest was outlined and the density of PNNs was measured using optical densitometry (ImageJ software). As optical density is a measure of how much light passes through the tissue and fluorescent signal represents the amount of fluorescent binding and emission, a lower optical density indicates that there is a greater degree of staining of the tissue. Preliminary results show that there is no significant interaction between postnatal treatment and intervention condition on the optical density in the TRN [F(1,16) = 0.319, p =0.58]. However, results showed a significant main effect of postnatal treatment on the optical density in the TRN [F(1,18) = 4.863, p = 0.041], such that AE animals had significantly lower (M = 0.18; SD = 0.047) optical density than SI animals (M = 0.24; SD = 0.076). Therefore, these preliminary results can be inferred as AE animals had a significantly greater number of PNNs compared to SI.