Early maternal availability and prefrontal correlates of reward-related memory. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • Early emotional experiences affect developing brain systems that subsequently mediate adult learning and memory in rodents. Here we test for similar effects in squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) four years after disruptions in early maternal availability. These conditions were previously shown to generate differences in emotional behavior, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal stress physiology, and right ventral medial prefrontal volumes determined in adulthood by magnetic resonance imaging. This report identifies in the same monkeys variability in reward-related memory on tests with a spatial reversal. Adult monkeys that more often selected locations repeatedly rewarded before each reversal had larger right ventral medial prefrontal volumes, but not hippocampal nor dorsolateral prefrontal volumes on the left or right brain side. Differences in performance were also discerned after each spatial reversal. These findings indicate that maternal availability alters developing ventral medial prefrontal brain regions involved in reward-related memory.

publication date

  • September 1, 2003

Research

keywords

  • Maternal Behavior
  • Memory
  • Prefrontal Cortex
  • Reward

Identity

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 0042661166

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1016/s1074-7427(03)00044-3

PubMed ID

  • 12932424

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 80

issue

  • 2