MATERNAL SEPARATION REDUCES LATENT INHIBITION IN THE CONDITIONED TASTE-AVERSION PARADIGM

Recent advances in the study of cognitive functioning and information processing in schizophrenic patients have made it clear that these patients suffer from disturbances in selective attention, which can be measured, among others with the latent inhibition paradigm. Given the fact that there is increasing evidence that schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder and that early maternal separation leads to clear neurodevelopmental disturbances in rats we studied the effects of early maternal separation on the development of latent inhibition using the conditioned taste aversion paradigm. The results show that early maternal separation enhances the susceptibility of rats for the dopamine agonist apomorphine and at the same time disrupts the development of latent inhibition. Given the evidence of a critical role for the hippocampus in latent inhibition and the fact that this brain structure seems to be particularly sensitive to disturbances in the early postnatal phase, the early maternal separation paradigm may represent an interesting animal model for studying information processing disturbances in schizophrenia.