Elsevier

Neuroscience Letters

Volume 339, Issue 1, 13 March 2003, Pages 67-71
Neuroscience Letters

Spatial pre-training attenuates hippocampal impairments in rats exposed to intermittent hypoxia

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3940(02)01459-3Get rights and content

Abstract

Intermittent hypoxia (IH), such as occurs in sleep apnea, is associated with increased apoptosis and neurobehavioral impairments in rats. To determine whether pre-training (P) modifies the effect of IH on spatial learning, adult male rats were trained in a spatial version of the water maze, exposed to IH or room air (RA) for 14 days, and then trained in a novel spatial task. P-RA had lower initial pathlengths than naive RA (N-RA), which were similar in P-IH and N-IH, indicating an adverse effect of IH on retention of behavioral strategies to solve the maze. However, P-IH acquired the later spatial task faster than N-IH. Pre-training was associated with increased phosphorylation of the cAMP-response element binding protein (CREB) in the hippocampus. Further, IH-induced decreases in CREB phosphorylation were attenuated by pre-training. We conclude that prior exposure to the water maze behavioral requirements attenuates the behavioral deficits occurring after IH exposure.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by National Institutes of Health grants HL69932, HL63912, and HL66358, American Heart Association grant AHA-0050442N, and The Commonwealth of Kentucky Research Challenge Trust Fund. B.W.R. is supported by F32 HD42395 from NIH.

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