Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2016 Aug 29:6:3-13.
doi: 10.1016/j.ynstr.2016.08.004. eCollection 2017 Feb.

Prenatal stressors in rodents: Effects on behavior

Marta Weinstock  1
Affiliations
Review

Prenatal stressors in rodents: Effects on behavior

Marta Weinstock. Neurobiol Stress. .

Abstract

The current review focuses on studies in rodents published since 2008 and explores possible reasons for any differences they report in the effects of gestational stress on various types of behavior in the offspring. An abundance of experimental data shows that different maternal stressors in rodents can replicate some of the abnormalities in offspring behavior observed in humans. These include, anxiety, in juvenile and adult rats and mice, assessed in the elevated plus maze and open field tests and depression, detected in the forced swim and sucrose-preference tests. Deficits were reported in social interaction that is suggestive of pathology associated with schizophrenia, and in spatial learning and memory in adult rats in the Morris water maze test, but in most studies only males were tested. There were too few studies on the novel object recognition test at different inter-trial intervals to enable a conclusion about the effect of prenatal stress and whether any deficits are more prevalent in males. Among hippocampal glutamate receptors, NR2B was the only subtype consistently reduced in association with learning deficits. However, like in humans with schizophrenia and depression, prenatal stress lowered hippocampal levels of BDNF, which were closely correlated with decreases in hippocampal long-term potentiation. In mice, down-regulation of BDNF appeared to occur through the action of gene-methylating enzymes that are already increased above controls in prenatally-stressed neonates. In conclusion, the data obtained so far from experiments in rodents lend support to a physiological basis for the neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenia and depression.

Keywords: Anxiety and depressive-like behavior; BDNF; Epigenetic mechanisms; Glutamate receptors; Memory; Social interaction.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Abe H., Hidaka N., Kawagoe C., Odagiri K., Watanabe Y. Prenatal psychological stress causes higher emotionality, depression-like behavior, and elevated activity in the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis. Neurosci. Res. 2007;59:145–151. - PubMed
    1. Akatsu S., Ishikawa C., Takemura K., Ohtani A., Shiga T. Effects of prenatal stress and neonatal handling on anxiety, spatial learning and serotonergic system of male offspring mice. Neurosci. Res. 2015;101:15–23. - PubMed
    1. Asztely F., Gustafsson B. Ionotropic glutamate receptors. Their possible role in the expression of hippocampal synaptic plasticity. Mol. Neurobiol. 1996;12:1–11. - PubMed
    1. Austin K.B., Bronzino J., Morgane P.J. Prenatal protein malnutrition affects synaptic potentiation in the dentate gyrus of rats in adulthood. Brain Res. 1986;394:267–273. - PubMed
    1. Autry A.E., Monteggia L.M. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor and neuropsychiatric disorders. Pharmacol. Rev. 2012;64:238–258. - PMC - PubMed