Lifelong environmental enrichment in rats: impact on emotional behavior, spatial memory vividness, and cholinergic neurons over the lifespan
AGE. 2012-05-17; 35(4): 1027-1043
DOI: 10.1007/s11357-012-9424-8
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We assessed lifelong environmental enrichment effects on possible age-related
modifications in emotional behaviors, spatial memory acquisition, retrieval of
recent and remote spatial memory, and cholinergic forebrain systems. At the age
of 1 month, Long-Evans female rats were placed in standard or enriched rearing
conditions and tested after 3 (young), 12 (middle-aged), or 24 (aged) months.
Environmental enrichment decreased the reactivity to stressful situations
regardless of age. In the water maze test, it delayed the onset of learning
deficits and prevented age-dependent spatial learning and recent memory retrieval
alterations. Remote memory retrieval, which was altered independently of age
under standard rearing conditions, was rescued by enrichment in young and
middle-aged, but unfortunately not aged rats. A protected basal forebrain
cholinergic system, which could well be one out of several neuronal
manifestations of lifelong environmental enrichment, might have contributed to
the behavioral benefits of this enrichment.