Journal
PHARMACOLOGY BIOCHEMISTRY AND BEHAVIOR
Volume 92, Issue 3, Pages 413-423Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.pbb.2009.01.006
Keywords
Adolescence; Elevated plus-maze; Anxiety; Pretest manipulation; Rats; Age differences; Sex differences
Funding
- [R01 DA019071]
- [R37 AA12525]
- [R01 AA01735501]
- [R01 AA12453]
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The elevated plus-maze (EPM) is vulnerable to variations in pretest circumstances when testing adult rodents. Because of an increasing interest in adolescence, the present experiments examined the impact of pretest manipulations on anxiety levels in the EPM among adolescent and adult Sprague-Dawley rats of both sexes. In Exp. 1, animals removed from their home cage and immediately placed on the EPM were compared to rats tested following 30 min of social isolation. or following 30-min exposure to a novel context. These pretest manipulations only modestly decreased anxiety levels at both ages. In Exp. 2, more varied pretest conditions were examined: testing directly from the home cage; testing following 30 min of social isolation in a novel environment; or a large saline injection and rehousing 18 h prior to a 30-min period of social isolation in a novelty situation before testing. In adults, anxiety levels decreased linearly as pretest perturbation increased, whereas adolescents showed comparable levels of anxiety with both the moderate and large perturbations. As a result, observed age differences in anxiety differed as a function of pretest circumstances. Therefore, caution is urged when using the EPM for across-age comparisons of anxiolytic and anxiogenic effects of pharmacological or other manipulations. (c) 2009 Published by Elsevier Inc.
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