Infusions of Nerve Growth Factor Into the Developing Frontal Cortex Leads to Deficits in Behavioral Flexibility and Increased Perseverance.

ABSTRACT: In the pursuit of further establishing a neurodevelopmental animal model to investigate the mechanisms underlying impaired executive function, a core and severely debilitating symptom of schizophrenia, we sought to characterize the deficits in behavioral flexibility in adult rats following neonatal infusions of nerve growth factor (NGF) into the medial part of the developing frontal cortex. Our previous studies using this neonatal frontal cortical lesion model have shown that it leads to adult-onset positive and negative symptom-like features, and several neuropathological abnormalities of schizophrenia. In the present study, we used operant conditioning-based paradigms to investigate set-shifting ability and reversal learning performance in adult rats that received infusions of NGF into t

SUBMITTER: Desai SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6101573 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature