Complete maternal deprivation affects social, but not spatial, learning in adult rats

Abstract

The effects of maternal deprivation on learning of social and spatial tasks were investigated in female adult rats. Pups were reared artificially and received "lickinglike" tactile stimulation (AR animals) or were reared with their mothers (MR animals). In adulthood, subjects were tested on paradigms of spatial learning and on paradigms involving learning of social cues. Results showed that maternal deprivation did not affect performance on spatial learning, but it did impair performance on the three social learning tasks. The AR animals made no distinction between a new and a previously presented juvenile conspecific. AR animals also responded less rapidly than MR animals at test for maternal behavior 2 weeks after a postpartum experience with pups. Finally, AR animals did not develop a preference for a food previously eaten by a familiar conspecific whereas MR animals did. This study indicates that animals reared without mother and siblings show no deficits in spatial tasks while showing consistent deficits in learning involving social interactions.

The Evolution of Individual and Cultural Variation in Social Learning

“…Three studies, all with rats, show that maternal 142 deprivation or markers of high maternal stress (infrequent licking and grooming) reduce the 143 subsequent social learning of food preferences from unfamiliar demonstrators [52][53][54]. This 144 facultative switching in response to specific developmental cues might represent an adaptively 145 limited degree of phenotypic plasticity: maternal deprivation or stress might indicate a recent 146 environmental shift to which mothers are poorly suited, making it adaptive to rely less on others' 147 potentially out-dated knowledge (although see [55] for caution regarding anticipatory parental 148 effects).…”

“…Nevertheless, there is a 11 great deal of research needed to more broadly map variation in social learning beyond this 12 simplistic East-West dichotomy, as well as whether this variation is task or situation independent, 13 or only occurs in specific domains. 14 …”

“…We think that it does. Models assuming that social learning 314 strategies change slowly via the natural selection of genetic variation [14] might greatly 315 underestimate the speed with which populations can respond to environmental change, if those 316 learning strategies are actually phenotypically plastic. Rather than natural selection acting on social Figure 1.…”

Early adversity alters attention and locomotion in adult Sprague-Dawley rats.

“…However, providing AR rats with additional somatosensory, tactile licking-like stimulation reverses these effects (Gonzalez et al, 2001;Levy et al, 2003;Lovic & Fleming, 2004;Novakov & Fleming, 2005).…”

“…In terms of spatial memory, prenatal stress has been shown to impair long-term and working memory in the Morris water maze (Aleksandrov, Polyakova, & Batuev, 2001;Gue et al, 2004;Lemaire, Koehl, Le Moal, & Abrous, 2000). In contrast, periodic and complete maternal separation have not produced significant impairment in water maze learning and memory (Lehmann, Pryce, Bettschen, & Feldon, 1999;Levy et al, 2003). Although the effects of early adversity on long-term spatial memory have been the focus of a number of studies, the effects on spatial working memory have not been fully examined.…”