Embedding of Parental Experience within the Offspring Telencephalon

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GENERAL SUMMARY Adverse experiences early in life can greatly alter a person's risk for health problems later in life; however, our understanding of exactly how this relationship takes shape remains poor. As a result, the proposed research programme aims to explore the way that stressors experienced by parents can affect the development of those areas of the brain known to be important for creating new memories. RECENT PROGRESS We have shown that adversity both before birth (in the form of maternal obesity) and during childhood (in the form of social isolation) can “get under the skin” to affect brain development, particularly within the hippocampus (a region important to memory formation). For example, we discovered offspring of obese mothers show significant age and sex-related impairments in certain behavioural measures of spatial learning, and that early--life social isolation affects the expression of certain plasticity--related proteins without altering spatial memory. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The long-term objective of this work will be to continue building a research programme that uses a “cell to behaviour” perspective to examine how various forms of early-life experience affect brain development. The short term objectives guiding the current proposal are to: 1) examine how psychosocial stress at different points in the lifespan affects proteins, cellular processes, and behaviours related to memory formation. 2) expand our view to consider the role that paternal adversity may have upon brain development. 3) investigate the way in which parental adversity affects both the hippocampus and the pre-frontal cortex (another area important for mediating learning and memory). SUMMARY OF PLANNED EXPERIMENTS Following from the stated objectives, the proposal will: 1) Characterise the effect that a model of secondary traumatic stress can have upon the adult brain. We will examine changes in plasticity-related proteins, electrophysiological measures of plasticity, and the behavioural phenotype of male and female rats. 2) Examine the influence that parental exposure to secondary traumatic stress may have upon the offspring brain. Male rats (before conception) and female rats (at different stages of pregnancy) will experience stress, and offspring will be examined at different ages. 3) Explore whether early-life adversity enhances resiliency in the face of an adult stressor. During gestation, female rats will experience either standard housing conditions, or exposure to secondary traumatic stress and their offspring will go on to experience either a similar adult environment, or a mismatched one. EXPECTED SIGNIFICANCE The proposed work will expand our understanding of how early-life adversity alters the development of brain regions related to memory formation. In addition, the opportunity to tackle complex, translational questions, and our adoption of a “cell to behaviour” approach, should provide a unique and engaging student training environment.