The effects of early maternal separation followed by social deprivation on the development and function of GABAergic system in the limbic structures

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To test the hypothesis that social stress of neonatal maternal deprivation followed by social isolation affects social behavior-relevant physiological functions of specific subclasses of GABAergic interneurons in the limbic structures, early stress-related changes in the expression levels of calcium binding proteins, social behaviors and the activity of spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (sIPSCs) were investigated for Wistar rats. Early social stress was found to elevate the expression levels of parvalbumin (PV) in basolateral amygdala and II /III layers of medial prefrontal cortex, whereas those of calretinin (CR) and calbindin (CB) showed no changes in the limbic structures. Ano-genital sniffing behavior, one test for social interaction test, tended to increase in the neonatally stressed animals. Electrophysiological measurements of GABAergic interneurons assessed by the mean amplitude and the frequency of sIPSCs recorded from principal neurons in the limbic regions, however, did not show any difference between the stressed group and control non-stressed group. These results suggest that early social stress produces altered social behavior via mechanisms other than those involving GABAergic interneurons