Summary
The acquisition of active avoidance response was studied in 45 to 50-day old rats
exposed to ethanol during pregnancy. The offsprings showed no retardation in somatic
development although there was a marked deficit in learning of avoidance response.
Daily administration of 1-desamino-D-arginine vasopressin (0.1 to 5 μg/100 g b.w.),
ACTH 4—10 (0.1 to 2 μg/100 g b.w.) and adrenaline (0.2 to 2.0 μg/100 g b.w.) facilitated
the learning performance in a dose-dependent manner. The retention of responding was
tested after the interruption of training for 7 days. The prenatally ethanol-exposed
rats with DDAVP pretreatment during the 5-day training procedure showed a better performance
than that of the vehicle-treated ethanol-exposed rats but they were inferior to the
controls. The present data indicate a complexity of biochemical changes due to the
prenatal exposure to ethanol and the learning deficit can be modified by either neuropeptides
or catecholamines, by such humoral mediators which are known to influence learning
behavior and memory consolidation under different experimental conditions and due
to different noxious stimuli from either external or internal environment.
Key words
Ethanol - Vasopressin - Catecholamines - ACTH peptides - Behavior
