Experience modulates brain plasticity in adult primates

描述（由申请人提供）：先前对啮齿动物的研究表明，生活在没有暴露于复杂环境的环境中会导致大脑的生理变化，这些变化会带来沉重的功能成本。与大鼠相比，非人类灵长类动物具有复杂的社会行为和认知能力。它们以复杂的方式与环境相互作用，因此可能对环境有更大的要求，以达到最佳功能。把猴子关在标准的实验室笼子里，可能会对它们的大脑产生更大的负面影响，而不是我之前在老鼠身上所做的研究所显示的神经元存活率下降。我们的实验室已经建立了一个新的狨猴设施，我的总体意图是在接下来的几年里，描述经验对成年狨猴神经发生和树突结构的影响。拟议的实验将把该物种的大脑可塑性的几个指标与环境复杂性水平联系起来，并确定这种影响是否分级。如果生活在丰富的环境中会改变成年狨猴的大脑结构，那么将确定造成这种影响的个体变量。这项工作将开始描述生活在不同环境中对成年灵长类动物结构可塑性的影响，并将为在实验室条件下研究动物创造基础，这些条件下没有可变住房的潜在混淆。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Prior research in rodents suggests that living without exposure to environmental complexity leads to physiological changes in the brain that carry heavy functional costs. In comparison to rats, non-human primates are characterized by complex social behavior and cognitive capacity. They interact with their environment in intricate ways and are therefore likely to have greater requirements with respect to environment for optimal functioning. Housing monkeys in standard laboratory cages may have an even greater negative impact on their brain than the decreased neuronal survival shown by my prior work in rats. Our laboratory has built a new marmoset facility and my general intent for the next several years is to characterize experiential influences on neurogenesis and dendritic architecture in adult marmosets. The proposed experiments will correlate several indices of brain plasticity in this species with the level of environmental complexity and determine whether the effect is graded. If living in an enriched environment alters brain structure in the adult marmoset, then individual variables responsible for the effect will be identified. This work will begin to characterize the effects of living in different environments on structural plasticity in adult primates, and it will create the basis for studying animals in laboratory conditions that are free of the potential confounds of variable housing.