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NEONATAL EXPOSURE TO TRIMETHYLTIN DISRUPTS SPATIAL DELAYED ALTERNATION LEARNING IN PREWEANLING RATS
Citation:
Stanton, M., K. Jensen, AND C. Pickens. NEONATAL EXPOSURE TO TRIMETHYLTIN DISRUPTS SPATIAL DELAYED ALTERNATION LEARNING IN PREWEANLING RATS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/J-91/315 (NTIS PB92124718).
Description:
Trimethyltin is an organotin compound that produces potent neurotoxicity in both adult and developing animals. he limbic system is a primary CNS target site for this toxicity and a prominent behavioral effect of TMT is disruption of learning and memory. mpairment of cognitive development has also been suggested by tudies showing that rats neonatally exposed to TMT cannot perform spatial working emory tasks during adulthood. owever, the question of how early in ontogeny uch deficits can be detected has not been addressed. he present study examined this question with a T-maze delayed alternation learning paradigm. ong-Evans rat ups, injected i.p. on postnatal day 10 (PND10) with 6 mg/kg TNT and tested on ND18, were unable to learn delayed alternation in the manner shown by vehicle ontrol pups. owever, TMT- and vehicle-treated groups were both able to learn a simple position discrimination. hese findings indicate a selective impairment of patial working memory by neonatal TMT exposure and show that this impairment can be demonstrated during the preweanling period in the rat.