Environmental enrichment in the absence of wheel running produces beneficial behavioural and anti-oxidative effects in rats.
The effects of early environmental enrichment (EE) when solving a simple spatial task in adult male rats were assessed. After weaning, rats were housed in pairs in enriched or standard cages (EE and control groups) for two and a half months. Then the rats were trained in a triangular-shaped pool to find a hidden platform whose location was defined in terms of two sources of information, a landmark outside the pool and a particular corner of the pool. As expected, enriched rats reached the platform faster than control animals. Enriched rats also performed better on a subsequent test trial without the platform with the geometry cue individually presented (in the absence of the landmark). Most importantly, the beneficial effects of the present protocol were obtained in the absence of wheel running. Additionally, the antioxidative effects in the hippocampus produced by the previous protocol are also shown.
['Mármol|F|F|', 'Sánchez|J|J|', 'Torres|M N|MN|', 'Chamizo|V D|VD|']
D000818:Animals D001522:Behavior, Animal D004777:Environment D006624:Hippocampus D006799:Housing, Animal D008297:Male D018782:Maze Learning D009043:Motor Activity D018384:Oxidative Stress D051381:Rats D020318:Rats, Long-Evans
Environmental enrichment Hippocampus Antioxidative measurements Morris water maze Thigmotaxis