RRC ID 35168
Author Groves JO, Leslie I, Huang GJ, McHugh SB, Taylor A, Mott R, Munafò M, Bannerman DM, Flint J.
Title Ablating adult neurogenesis in the rat has no effect on spatial processing: evidence from a novel pharmacogenetic model.
Journal PLoS Genet
Abstract The function of adult neurogenesis in the rodent brain remains unclear. Ablation of adult born neurons has yielded conflicting results about emotional and cognitive impairments. One hypothesis is that adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus enables spatial pattern separation, allowing animals to distinguish between similar stimuli. We investigated whether spatial pattern separation and other putative hippocampal functions of adult neurogenesis were altered in a novel genetic model of neurogenesis ablation in the rat. In rats engineered to express thymidine kinase (TK) from a promoter of the rat glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), ganciclovir treatment reduced new neurons by 98%. GFAP-TK rats showed no significant difference from controls in spatial pattern separation on the radial maze, spatial learning in the water maze, contextual or cued fear conditioning. Meta-analysis of all published studies found no significant effects for ablation of adult neurogenesis on spatial memory, cue conditioning or ethological measures of anxiety. An effect on contextual freezing was significant at a threshold of 5% (P = 0.04), but not at a threshold corrected for multiple testing. The meta-analysis revealed remarkably high levels of heterogeneity among studies of hippocampal function. The source of this heterogeneity remains unclear and poses a challenge for studies of the function of adult neurogenesis.
Volume 9(9)
Pages e1003718
Published 2013-1-1
DOI 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003718
PII PGENETICS-D-12-01266
PMID 24039591
PMC PMC3764151
MeSH Animals Anxiety / physiopathology Cognitive Dysfunction / genetics* Cognitive Dysfunction / pathology Conditioning, Psychological Fear / physiology Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein / genetics Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein / metabolism Hippocampus / metabolism Hippocampus / physiology* Maze Learning / physiology Memory / physiology Neurogenesis / genetics* Neurons / metabolism* Pharmacogenetics Rats Thymidine Kinase / genetics* Thymidine Kinase / metabolism
IF 5.175
Times Cited 77
WOS Category GENETICS & HEREDITY
Resource
Rats SD-Tg(Gfap-Tk)Jog