Behavioral Complexity of Perinatally Underfed Lactating Rats: The Case of Swimming and Kyphotic Responses

Abstract

In the rat, perinatal undernutrition associated with deficiencies in the mother-litter interactions, interferes with cortical subcortical networks underlying swimming and kyphotic responses of lactating dams. For swimming experiment, food restriction was achieved by separating pups from the mother (12 h daily) in an incubator from ages P4 - 13. Moreover, for kyphotic response, food intake was reduced from gestational day 6 (G6) with 50% (9.5 g) of the normal diet (Purina chow), from G13 to G19 with 70% (13.3 g), and with 100% (19 g) of the same diet until parturition. After birth, prenatally underfed pups were rotated between litter of two lactating dams, one with ligated nipples, for 12 h daily between ages of P2 - 25. We evaluated swimming maturation and the kyphotic posture of dams by exposing pups, correlated with their tentative cervical and lumbosacral spinal cord descending integrative mechanisms. Current findings suggest that the pattern of the spinal cord substrates in both behavioral responses affected by early undernutrition, changed according to the future complexity of the functional and incoming environmental sensory information.