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Abstract
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is one of the leading causes of mental retardation in the world. Since alcohol's deleterious effects are caused in utero, consideration must be given to what can be done to ameliorate some of its effects once the child has been diagnosed. Environmental complexity (EC) has been shown to affect some of the same CNS systems and behaviors in normal and brain damaged animals as are affected in FAS. The direction of the changes produced by EC may reverse the damaging effects of intrauterine exposure to alcohol. This premise was tested using rats exposed prenatally to alcohol and reared either in an enriched environment or in standard colony housing (SC). A pairfed control group was used in these two conditions to control for the reduced nutritional component of prenatal alcohol exposure. The animals were tested for activity level in the open field apparatus for three consecutive days at age 24, 25 and 26. Learning was assessed with a passive avoidance apparatus at age 30, and learning retention was assessed in the same apparatus at age 33 days.
Behavioral tests revealed that the alcohol group was more active in the open field apparatus than was the non-alcohol exposed group. Although postnatal enrichment did not reduce fetal alcohol hyperactivity as hypothesized, it did affect the pattern of performance in open field over the three days of testing in a manner suggesting reduction of emotionality (fear) and increased habituation.
The passive avoidance paradigm revealed that the enriched group learned more quickly than non-enriched animals to passively avoid shock. The interaction with alcohol was in an unexpected direction, and discussion as to a better model and apparatus are given.
