Maternal deprivation (MD) causes cognitive deficits that persist until adulthood. Thereby, the environmental enrichment (EE) is widely used to increase brain plasticity. Here, pregnant female rats were used and their offspring were submitted to neonatal MD from post-natal day 1-10; after weaning the rats were submitted to EE. MD caused deficits on short and long-term aversive and recognition memory and on cognitive flexibility tested on reversed Morris Water Maze test. MD also promoted the decrease of hippocampal Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF) protein expression. The EE was able to protect against the cognitive deficits, avoiding the memory and the cognitive flexibility disrupting, and normalizing hippocampal BDNF expression of rats submitted to MD. These data confirms that MD promotes long-life memory deficits and demonstrates that MD causes cognitive flexibility disruption; the mechanisms seem involve the decrease of BDNF. We also demonstrate that EE, which improves BDNF, is able to avoid memory deficits and cognitive flexibility disrupts.

中文翻译：

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母体剥夺会损害记忆力和认知灵活性，而环境丰富化可避免这种影响。

母体剥夺（MD）会导致认知缺陷，这种缺陷持续到成年。因此，环境富集（EE）被广泛用于增加大脑的可塑性。在这里，使用了怀孕的雌性大鼠，并将它们的后代从出生后的第1-10天开始接受新生儿MD治疗。断奶后将大鼠送入EE。MD导致短期和长期厌恶和识别记忆以及逆向Morris水迷宫测试中测试的认知灵活性方面的缺陷。MD还促进了海马脑源性神经营养因子（BDNF）蛋白表达的下降。EE能够预防认知缺陷，避免记忆和认知柔韧性破坏，并使提交MD的大鼠海马BDNF表达正常化。这些数据证实MD促进了长寿命记忆缺陷，并证明MD引起认知柔韧性破坏。该机制似乎涉及BDNF的降低。我们还证明，改善BDNF的EE能够避免记忆力不足和认知柔韧性破坏。