Life-long environmental enrichment differentially affects the mnemonic response to estrogen in young, middle-aged, and aged female mice. Neurobiol Learn Mem 2007 Nov;88(4):393-408
Date
09/18/2007Pubmed ID
17869132Pubmed Central ID
PMC2098878DOI
10.1016/j.nlm.2007.07.015Scopus ID
2-s2.0-34848883642 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 73 CitationsAbstract
The present study was designed to examine whether life-long exposure to standard or enriched housing affects the ability of estrogen to improve spatial and object memory throughout the lifespan. Three-week-old female mice were maintained in standard or enriched housing up to and through ovariectomy and behavioral testing at 5, 17, or 22 months of age. Spatial memory was tested in the Morris water maze and object memory was tested using an object recognition task. Immediately after training each day, mice were injected intraperitoneally with vehicle or 0.2 mg/kg 17beta-estradiol. Among young females, object recognition was enhanced by estradiol alone, an effect that was reduced by enrichment. In contrast, spatial water maze performance was impaired by estradiol alone, but improved by the combination of both estradiol and enrichment. At middle-age, object recognition was enhanced by estradiol or enrichment alone, and the combination of both treatments. Spatial memory in the water maze was also improved by both treatments at middle-age, but the beneficial effects of estradiol were limited to standard-housed females. Finally, whereas enrichment in aged females significantly enhanced performance in both tasks, estradiol had no effect at this age in either task. In total, the data indicate that life-long enrichment can significantly alter the extent to which estradiol affects memory in mice throughout the lifespan. Importantly, the interaction between these treatments is highly dependent on age and type of memory tested.
Author List
Gresack JE, Kerr KM, Frick KMAuthor
Karyn Frick BA,MA,PhD Professor in the Psychology department at University of Wisconsin - MilwaukeeMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AgingAnalysis of Variance
Animals
Discrimination Learning
Environment
Estradiol
Female
Housing, Animal
Maze Learning
Memory
Mice
Mice, Inbred C57BL
Random Allocation
Statistics, Nonparametric
