Bisphenol-A (BPA) exposure can affect cognitive functions of rodents and humans. However, whether information inputs for these functions in the brain are perturbed by BPA remains unclear. Here, visual perception in rats was assessed by testing their ability to discriminate between vertical and horizontal grating. We found that BPA exposure (1 mg/kg/day) during gestation and lactation markedly decreased the grating discrimination ability in rat pups (postnatal 21 days). The results of neuronal functions in the primary visual cortex (V1) showed that the orientation selectivity and signal extraction ability and fidelity were notably decreased after BPA exposure. These effects were accompanied by a reduction in synaptic plasticity (i.e., spine density and maturity) in the V1. According to inflammatory factor expression and glial cell morphology, no increase in inflammatory activation was observed after BPA exposure. However, BPA-exposed rat pups exhibited a significant decrease in IL-1β expression in the V1, accompanied by a decline in P38 phosphorylation. After local injection of IL-1β (10 ng/ml) in the V1, these two visual properties recovered to normal levels. Thus, our findings imply that physiological dysfunction of IL-1β may contribute to orientation perception deficits in BPA-exposed rats.

中文翻译：

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妊娠期和哺乳期双酚A暴露会导致大鼠幼仔视觉视觉知觉缺陷，这是由于原发性视觉皮层中白介素1β表达的降低。

双酚A（BPA）暴露会影响啮齿动物和人类的认知功能。但是，尚不清楚双酚A是否会干扰大脑中用于这些功能的信息输入。在这里，通过测试它们区分垂直和水平光栅的能力来评估大鼠的视觉感知。我们发现，在妊娠和哺乳期间，BPA暴露（1 mg / kg /天）显着降低了幼鼠（出生后21天）的光栅分辨能力。初次视皮层（V1）中神经元功能的结果表明，BPA暴露后，方向选择性和信号提取能力以及保真度明显降低。这些影响伴随着V1突触可塑性（即脊柱密度和成熟度）的降低。根据炎症因子的表达和神经胶质细胞的形态，BPA暴露后未观察到炎症激活的增加。然而，暴露于BPA的大鼠幼崽在V1中表现出IL-1β表达的显着下降，并伴随着P38磷酸化的下降。在V1中局部注射IL-1β（10 ng / ml）后，这两个视觉特性恢复到正常水平。因此，我们的发现暗示，IL-1β的生理功能障碍可能会导致BPA暴露大鼠的定向知觉缺陷。