Neonatal Exposure to Trimethyltin Disrupts Spatial Delayed Alternation Learningin Preweanling Rats

摘要

Trimethyltin is an organotin compound that produces potent neurotoxicity in bothadult and developing animals. The limbic system is a primary CNS target site for this toxicity and a prominent behavioral effect of TMT is disruption of learning and memory. Impairment of cognitive development has also been suggested by studies showing that rats neonatally exposed to TMT cannot perform spatial working memory tasks during adulthood. However, the question of how early in ontogeny such deficits can be detected has not been addressed. The present study examined the question with a T-maze delayed alternation learning paradigm. Long-Evans rat pups, injected i.p. on postnatal day 10 (PND10) with 6 mg/kg TMT and tested on PND18, were unable to learn delayed alternation in the manner shown by