ArticlesAge and Dose-Dependent Effects of Ethanol on the Induction of Hippocampal Long-Term Potentiation
Section snippets
Hippocampal Slice Preparation
Male Sprague-Dawley rats, 30 days old (adolescent, n = 22) and 90 days old (adult, n = 16), were used as subjects. The animals were sacrificed with an overdose of Halothane, and the brain was quickly removed and placed in ice-cold, oxygenated artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF), which contained (in mM) NaCl, 124; KCl, 3.25; NaH2PO4, 1.25; NaHCO3, 25; CaCl2, 2.4; MgSO4, 2.0; and dextrose, 10. The ACSF was oxygenated with 95% O2: 5% CO2 to maintain pH = 7.4. The hippocampi were dissected from
Results
Under control conditions, robust LTP was induced in hippocampal slices from both adolescent (242 ± 24% of baseline pEPSP slope) and adult (191 ± 23%) rats. Although there was a clear trend toward greater LTP magnitude among the slices from adolescent animals, this trend did not reach statistical significance [F(1, 71) = 3.27, p = 0.075].
There was no significant effect of ethanol on the slope of the baseline pEPSPs during the 30-min ethanol exposure period. However, the presence of ethanol
Discussion
The principal finding of this study is that ethanol attenuated the induction of LTP in hippocampal slices from adolescent rats at physiological concentrations that were ineffective in slices from adults. Both 10 mM and 30 mM ethanol significantly depressed the induction of LTP in slices from adolescent rats, but neither of these concentrations attenuated the induction of LTP in slices from adults. This finding is consistent with our previous report that ethanol attenuates NMDA receptor-mediated
Acknowledgements
This work was funded in part by National Institutes of Health Grants AG13165 to DAT and AA11088 to HSS, by a VA Merit Review Award to DAT, and by VA Research Career Scientist Awards to HSS and WAW.
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