Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: María Belén Cardillo | email: belencardillo@gmail.com
María Belén Cardillo 1°, Rocío Priegue 1°, Hugo Perez 1°, Lucila Ríos 1°, Eduardo Tomás Cánepa 1°, Bruno Gabriel Berardino 1°
1° Laboratorio de Neuroepigenética y Adversidades Tempranas, FCEyN, UBA
Early-life adversities, such as child low socioeconomic conditions, affect the structure and function of the brain leading to impaired mental health later in life. Using a validated multifactorial murine model of social and material deprivation (SMD) we aimed to evaluate the effects of perinatal adversity on social cognition and its related molecular mechanisms. We studied social cognition using the habituation/dishabituation test and found that it is affected by perinatal SMD in male and female mice. Specifically, SMD mice showed a celling level of social investigation throughout trials indicating intact social motivation and decreased social recognition. Ample evidence demonstrated that social cognition is subserved by the PFC, acting in conjunction with other cortical and subcortical areas. We used Nissl staining to determine morphological changes derived from SMD in specific brain regions. Consistent with a decreased brain weight we observed a decrease in total dorsal-ventral axis length and a reduction in the ventral hippocampus. Notably, infralimbic PFC from SMD mice showed a higher size than control mice. We further found that expression of genes involved in the E/I balance were altered in the PFC of SMD mice. These results suggest that SMD affect brain morphology, and this might be driven by gene expression alterations in the PFC providing a molecular mechanism for understanding the neurobiology of social cognition and its dysregulation by perinatal deprivation.