Abstract
Rats were kept in social isolation for one year after weaning and then tested for their performance in maze-learning and visual discrimination tests. In both tests their performance was poorer than that of controls which were raised socially after weaning. Their learning ability, however, seemed to have remained unaffected. After the learning tests were over, the animals were sacrificed and their brains analyzed for cellularity (DNA, protein), myelination (cholesterol) and synaptic development (gangliosides). The brains of the environmentally deprived rats had normal cell number and cell size but were significantly deficient in myelin and synaptic population. We propose that the poor learning performance of the socially isolated animals could be attributable to decreased myelination and synaptogenesis in their brain. The results also indicate that such social isolation is synonymous with malnutrition in affecting the psychoneural development of the brain.
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