Reproductive experience affects learning memory and neural plasticity via ERα.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Reproductive experience (i.e. pregnancy, lactation and rearing) results in significant alterations in subsequent hormone levels in female rats. Several studies have demonstrated that circulating hormones can significantly affect hippocampus neural structure and following learning and memory. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether reproductive experience induces alterations in learning and memory in cycling female rats and reproductively senescent rats and what neural mechanism involved in behavioral change. The Y maze and Morris water maze was used to test cycling primiparous rats and their age-matched nulliparous counterparts for special- learning and -memory. This result suggests that reproductive experience significantly alters learning and memory, without synaptic formal changes in hippocampus.