中国科学院心理健康重点实验室知识库

Isolation rearing produces significant behavioral and neurochemical dysfunctions in rodents, which resemble the symptoms of schizophrenia. Clozapine, one of the atypical antipsychotics, is widely used in the treatment of schizophrenia patients and in experimental studies. In this study, male Sprague Dawley rats were randomly assigned to either group-reared or isolation-reared conditions during postnatal days (PNDs) 21–34. During PNDs 46–55, the rats weresubjected to chronicclozapine (1.0mg/kg for 10 days) or saline treatment. On PND 56, all rats underwent behavioral testing and then were sacrificed for biochemical testing. The results indicated that adolescent social isolation induced impairments in prepulse inhibition and reversal learning, and clozapine injection improved the prepulse inhibition disruption but not reversal learning ability. Furthermore, clozapine administration reversed the increased brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) mRNA level in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) that was induced by adolescent isolation. However, clozapine decreased the BDNF mRNA level in the mPFC in groupreared rats. Together, our findings provide additional