Abstract
Binge drinking is common in adolescence. Rodent studies modeling adolescent binge drinking find persistent effects on the brain’s physiology, including increased expression of neuroimmune genes, impaired neurogenesis, and changes in behavioral flexibility. This study used females and males to investigate the effects of adolescent intermittent ethanol (AIE) on a battery of behaviors assessing spatial navigation using a radial arm water maze, working memory using the Hebb-Williams maze, non-spatial long-term memory using novel object recognition, and dominance using a tube dominance test. Results indicate that AIE impairs adult acquisition in spatial navigational learning with deficits predominantly driven by females. Surprisingly, AIE slowed the transition from random to serial search strategies in both sexes, suggesting AIE impairs flexibility in problem-solving processing. In the Hebb-Williams maze working memory task, adult AIE rats exhibited deficits in problem solving, resulting in more errors across the 12 maze configurations, independent of sex. Conversely, AIE decreased dominance behaviors in female rats, and at 7 months post-alcohol, female AIE rats continued to exhibit deficits in novel object recognition. These results suggest that cognitive-behavioral alterations after adolescent binge drinking persist well into middle age, despite abstinence. Future studies should focus on intervening treatment strategies in both females and males.
Highlights
The majority of all alcohol intake by adolescents is consumed in patterns of binge exposure (>5 drinks/session for men; >4 drinks/session for women) [1]
The radial arm water maze (RAWM) was performed two months after the end of adolescent intermittent ethanol (AIE) treatment to assess the persistent effects of AIE on spatial navigation and search strategies (Figure 3a)
Control males were more likely to use a serial search strategy than AIE males by the third trial, p = 0.002, and control females were more likely to use a serial search than AIE females by the fourth trial, p = 0.02. These results suggest that AIE impairs behavior by altering flexibility in strategy selection for problem solving
Summary
The majority of all alcohol intake by adolescents is consumed in patterns of binge exposure (>5 drinks/session for men; >4 drinks/session for women) [1]. Preclinical studies have highlighted that the cognitive and neurological consequences of adolescent binge drinking can persist into adulthood, suggesting that binge drinking during adolescence is changing the trajectory of brain development in a permanent way [5,6,7]. This pattern of alcohol intake is evident in both males and females, with almost 20% of male and female 12th graders having engaged in binge drinking in the last two weeks [8]. Previous preclinical studies have demonstrated that adolescent intermittent ethanol (AIE) exposure impacts performance
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