Adolescent alcohol exposure persistently alters orbitofrontal cortical encoding of Pavlovian conditional stimulus components in female rats

Exposure to alcohol during adolescence impacts cortical and limbic brain regions undergoing maturation. In rodent models, long-term effects on behavior and neurophysiology have been described after adolescent intermittent ethanol (AIE), especially in males. We hypothesized that AIE in female rats in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Scientific reports Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 13775 - 17
Main Authors:	Pochapski, Jose A., Gómez-A, Alexander, Stringfield, Sierra J., Jaggers, Hannah, Boettiger, Charlotte A., Da Cunha, Claudio, Robinson, Donita L.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Nature Publishing Group UK 14-06-2024 Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio
Subjects:	631/378/1662 631/378/1788 631/443/376 Adolescents Animal models Animals Behavior, Animal - drug effects Conditioned stimulus Conditioning, Classical - drug effects Cues Ethanol Ethanol - pharmacology Female Females Firing pattern Humanities and Social Sciences Long-term effects Motivation multidisciplinary Neurons - drug effects Neurons - physiology Neurophysiology Nucleus accumbens Nucleus Accumbens - drug effects Nucleus Accumbens - physiology Phenotypes Prefrontal cortex Prefrontal Cortex - drug effects Prefrontal Cortex - physiology Rats Rats, Sprague-Dawley Reinforcement Reward Science Science (multidisciplinary) Sex differences
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Summary:	Exposure to alcohol during adolescence impacts cortical and limbic brain regions undergoing maturation. In rodent models, long-term effects on behavior and neurophysiology have been described after adolescent intermittent ethanol (AIE), especially in males. We hypothesized that AIE in female rats increases conditional approach to a reward-predictive cue and corresponding neuronal activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAc). We evaluated behavior and neuronal firing after AIE (5 g/kg intragastric) or water (CON) in adult female rats. Both AIE and CON groups expressed a ST phenotype, and AIE marginally increased sign-tracking (ST) and decreased goal-tracking (GT) metrics. NAc neurons exhibited phasic firing patterns to the conditional stimulus (CS), with no differences between groups. In contrast, neuronal firing in the OFC of AIE animals was greater at CS onset and offset than in CON animals. During reward omission, OFC responses to CS offset normalized to CON levels, but enhanced OFC firing to CS onset persisted in AIE. We suggest that the enhanced OFC neural activity observed in AIE rats to the CS could contribute to behavioral inflexibility. Ultimately, AIE persistently impacts the neurocircuitry of reward-motivated behavior in female rats.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	2045-2322 2045-2322
DOI:	10.1038/s41598-024-64036-1