Introduction: Prenatal exposure to nicotine can cause many fetal developmental problems. This study determined the influence of nicotine during pregnancy on the development of cognitive behavior in the offspring.
Methods: Nicotine was administered to pregnant rats through implanted osmotic mini-pumps at 6mg/kg/day and flow rate of 60 μl/day for whole pregnancy from gestational day 4. Fetal and offspring body and brain weight was measured. Learning and memory were tested in adult offspring with Morris water maze; Learning and memory-related receptors were measured.
Results: The results showed that exposure to prenatal nicotine (PN) not only caused fetal growth restriction, but also had long-term effects on learning and memory in the offspring. The PN offspring exhibited longer escape latency regardless of sex. The number of passing the platform was significantly less in the PN offspring than that of the control. The expression of messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein of N-methyl-D-aspartic acid receptor (NMDAR) in the hippocampus was significantly increased, whereas alpha7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7 nAChR) protein was decreased with unchanged α7 nAChR mRNA in the PN offspring.
Conclusion: The data provided novel information on the PN-affected development in learning and memory in the offspring, suggesting that α7 nAChR and NMDAR1 in the hippocampus might be the targets for actions of PN in association with memory impairment.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntu178 | DOI Listing |
Nat Comput Sci
January 2025
Key Lab of Fabrication Technologies for Integrated Circuits and Key Laboratory of Microelectronic Devices and Integrated Technology, Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
The human brain is a complex spiking neural network (SNN) capable of learning multimodal signals in a zero-shot manner by generalizing existing knowledge. Remarkably, it maintains minimal power consumption through event-based signal propagation. However, replicating the human brain in neuromorphic hardware presents both hardware and software challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology Bengaluru, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India.
The increasing prevalence of network connections is driving a continuous surge in the requirement for network security and safeguarding against cyberattacks. This has triggered the need to develop and implement intrusion detection systems (IDS), one of the key components of network perimeter aimed at thwarting and alleviating the issues presented by network invaders. Over time, intrusion detection systems have been instrumental in identifying network breaches and deviations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurosci
January 2025
Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford.
Limits on information processing capacity impose limits on task performance. We show that male and female mice achieve performance on a perceptual decision task that is near-optimal given their capacity limits, as measured by policy complexity (the mutual information between states and actions). This behavioral profile could be achieved by reinforcement learning with a penalty on high complexity policies, realized through modulation of dopaminergic learning signals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZhong Nan Da Xue Xue Bao Yi Xue Ban
July 2024
Department of Neurology, Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410013, China.
Objectives: The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is increasing globally, however its pathogenesis is still unclear. The evidence showed that the progression of AD was closely related to the apoptosis of nerve cells. This study amis to explore the role and specific mechanism of miR-15a and Bag5 in the apoptosis of nerve cells induced by beta-amyloid protein (Aβ) in AD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFood Chem Toxicol
January 2025
Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Jinzhou Medical University, Jinzhou, Liaoning, PR China. Electronic address:
Flame retardant polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) accumulate in human bodies through food and dust ingestion, and cause neurobehavioral deficits with obscure mechanism. We aimed to investigate NMDAR-CaMKⅡγ-mediated synapse-to-nuclear communication involved in BDE-209-induced cognitive impairment, and alleviation from exogenous melatonin. Decreased NMDAR subunits GluN2A and 2B, autophosphorylation of CaMKⅡα, and postsynaptic GluA1 trafficking were observed in the hippocampus of juvenile rats after maternal BDE-209 exposure.
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