Original Research Article
Developmental periods of choline sensitivity provide an ontogenetic mechanism for regulating memory capacity and age-related dementia.
1 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, USA
2 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, USA
2 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, USA
In order to determine brain and behavioral sensitivity of nutrients that may serve as inductive signals during early development, we altered choline availability to rats during 7 time frames spanning embryonic day (ED) 6 through postnatal day (PD) 75 and examined spatial memory ability in the perinatally-treated adults. Two sensitive periods were identified, ED 12-17 and PD 16-30, during which choline supplementation facilitated spatial memory and produced increases in dendritic spine density in CA1 and dentate gyrus (DG) regions of the hippocampus while also changing the dendritic fields of DG granule cells. Moreover, choline supplementation during ED 12-17 only, prevented the memory decline normally observed in aged rats. These behavioral changes were strongly correlated with the acetylcholine (ACh) content of hippocampal slices following stimulated release. Our data demonstrate that the availability of choline during critical periods of brain development influences cognitive performance in adulthood and old age, and emphasize the importance of perinatal nutrition for successful cognitive aging.
Keywords: spatial memory, cognitive aging, hippocampus, perinatal nutrition, neural plasticity, epigenetics, gene expression
Copyright: © 2008 Meck, Williams, Cermak and Blusztajn. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence: Warren H. Meck, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, 572 Research Drive, Durham, NC, 27708, USA. e-mail: meck@psych.duke.edu
Citation: Meck WH, Williams CL, Cermak JM and Blusztajn JK (2008) Developmental periods of choline sensitivity provide an ontogenetic mechanism for regulating memory capacity and age-related dementia. Front. Integr. Neurosci. (2007) 1:7. doi:10.3389/neuro.07.007.2007
Received: 11 September 2007; paper pending published: 09 October 2007; accepted: 17 April 2008; published online: 06 May 2008.
Edited by:
Sidney A. Simon, Duke University, USA
Reviewed by:
Ranier Gutierrez, CINVESTAV, Mexico
Valerie Doyere, CNRS, France
Valerie Doyere, CNRS, France
*Correspondence: Warren H. Meck, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, 572 Research Drive, Durham, NC, 27708, USA. e-mail: meck@psych.duke.edu
