Early sensory experience, such as exposure to maternal or other environmental factors, is considered to influence neurocognitive development and behaviors. In many species, exposure to odorants during pregnancy or lactation impacts the morpho-functional development of the olfactory circuitry with changes in olfactory sensitivity, feeding behavior and food preferences at birth or later. However, few studies have investigated the impact of a perinatal exposure to odorants on the anxiety-like behavior of animals to stressfull stimuli. Here, we exposed mice to heptaldehyde (HEP) during pregnancy and lactation and measured the anxiety-like behavior of their offspring to stress-inducing novel stimuli at weaning in presence or absence of odorants. We applied a combined social and maternal separation as a stressor and measured the anxiety-like behavior in an open field (OF) in presence of two odorants, HEP or α-pinene (AP) as a control odorant. Although the presence of the odorant during the social separation did not influence anxiety-like behavior, we found that, if mice born to non-odorized mothers exhibited a decreased exploratory behavior in the presence of both odorants, the effect was restricted to AP for the mice perinatally exposed to HEP. These results show that anxiety-like behaviors during a stress-inducing event could be reduced by the presence of a familiar odorant. We propose that the recall of an early olfactory experience could contribute to the improvement of animal welfare in various situations associated with husbandry practices.

中文翻译：

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环境暴露于母体学习的香精对小鼠断奶时焦虑样行为的影响。

早期的感觉经验，例如暴露于母亲或其他环境因素，被认为会影响神经认知的发育和行为。在许多物种中，怀孕或哺乳期间暴露于加味剂会影响嗅觉回路的形态功能发育，并改变嗅觉敏感性，进食行为和出生时或以后的食物偏好。然而，很少有研究调查围产期暴露于加味剂对动物对充分刺激的焦虑样行为的影响。在这里，我们在妊娠和哺乳期间将小鼠暴露于庚醛（HEP）中，并测量了它们的后代在有或没有加味剂断奶时对应激诱导的新刺激物的焦虑样行为。我们应用社会和母亲分离的组合作为压力源，并在存在两种加味剂HEP或α-pine烯（AP）作为对照加味剂的情况下，在开阔地域（OF）中测量了类似焦虑的行为。尽管在社会隔离期间加味剂的存在不会影响类似焦虑的行为，但我们发现，如果在两种加味剂均存在的情况下，由未加味母亲产下的小鼠的探究行为降低，则该作用仅限于AP围产期暴露于HEP的小鼠。这些结果表明，在压力诱导事件中，类似焦虑的行为可以通过熟悉的气味剂的存在而减少。我们建议，召回早期的嗅觉经验可以有助于改善与饲养管理相关的各种情况下的动物福利。