Event Abstract Back to Event Impaired response to novelty and motor behaviour in the D-Gal rat model of accelerated aging. Beatriz Vila-Verde1*, Diana Reis-Borges1, Carlos Nascimento2 and Diana Cunha-Reis1, 2* 1 Institute of Biosystems and Integrative Sciences (BioISI), Portugal 2 Institute of Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon, Portugal Aging causes multiple physiological changes like cognitive decline, sympathoexcitation, impaired motor function and enhanced susceptibility to oxidative damage. We evaluated the relation between motor function, cognitive performance and selective synaptic markers in a rat model of accelerated aging (AA). AA was induced in 12-week-old male Wistar rats by D-galactose (250 mg/Kg) administration for 40 days and compared to Sham (saline injections) and 12-month old (natural aging) rats. The behavioural evaluation was performed with the open-field test1 for locomotion and exploratory traits, with the rotarod for motor performance, with elevated plus maze test for anxiety, and with the water maze for spatial memory acquisition. Novelty response was evaluated in the holeboard with objects for responses to spatial mismatch novelty2 and by the novel object recognition test3 for non-spatial novelty. Hippocampal expression of tyrosine hydroxilase (TH), flotilin and caveolin in hippocampal membranes was evaluated by western blot. AA rats showed decreased body weight, impaired exploration and motor performance, and mild cognitive impairment compared to sham controls but not so pronounced as naturally aged rats. Responses to spatial novelty were also impaired in AA rats but not responses to presentation of novel objects. AA rats did not show anxious behaviour when compared to Sham controls. Altogether this suggests that the changes observed in this model are not irreversible and do not fully reproduce the physiological responses to aging. Acknowledgements Supported by FCT (SFRH/ BPD/81358/2011; PTDC/SAU-PUB/28311/2017). References 1- Crusio et al. Behav Brain Res, 1989, 32:75; 2-Goh et al., Cereb Cortex, 2013, 23:129; 3-Goh et al., Cereb Cortex 2013 23:1118. Keywords: Aging, Hippocampus, novelty, Learning, Dopamine Conference: XVI Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Neuroscience (SPN2019), Lisboa, Portugal, 30 May - 1 Jun, 2019. Presentation Type: Poster presentation Topic: Neurodegeneration / Physiological Aging Brain Citation: Vila-Verde B, Reis-Borges D, Nascimento C and Cunha-Reis D (2019). Impaired response to novelty and motor behaviour in the D-Gal rat model of accelerated aging.. Front. Cell. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: XVI Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Neuroscience (SPN2019). doi: 10.3389/conf.fncel.2019.01.00002 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 27 Feb 2019; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019. * Correspondence: Ms. Beatriz Vila-Verde, Institute of Biosystems and Integrative Sciences (BioISI), Lisbon, 1749-016, Portugal, beatriz.vilaverdes@gmail.com Dr. Diana Cunha-Reis, Institute of Biosystems and Integrative Sciences (BioISI), Lisbon, 1749-016, Portugal, dcreis@fc.ul.pt Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Beatriz Vila-Verde Diana Reis-Borges Carlos Nascimento Diana Cunha-Reis Google Beatriz Vila-Verde Diana Reis-Borges Carlos Nascimento Diana Cunha-Reis Google Scholar Beatriz Vila-Verde Diana Reis-Borges Carlos Nascimento Diana Cunha-Reis PubMed Beatriz Vila-Verde Diana Reis-Borges Carlos Nascimento Diana Cunha-Reis Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.