Professor Toshifumi Kishimoto's research group at the Department of Psychiatry, Nara Medical University, used mice to show that when raised in isolation at a certain time of childhood, the function of certain types of nerve cells in the brain declines. Clarified.The results were published in the online version of "Cerebral Cortex".
In order for the human brain to develop healthy, it is important to have relationships with parents and groups of children.On the contrary, if a child spends time in isolation during development, brain development may be inhibited and mental illness may develop, but the details of nerve cell dysfunction in the brain and the cause of behavioral disorders are unknown. Met.
In this study, pups raised as mother mice were divided into isolated-reared mice and group-reared mice for 21 to 14 days after birth, bred in separate containers, and then bred together again.Then, the activity of certain types of neurons (PH cells) in the prefrontal cortex obtained from each mouse was electrophysiologically recorded.
As a result, in the PH cells of isolated-reared mice, (1) the ability to transmit strong messages to other brain regions was impaired due to decreased excitability, and (2) the ability to transmit excitatory synaptic inputs was decreased, resulting in prefrontal cortex. It was presumed that the information processing capacity of the prefrontal cortex was reduced.However, when (3) the isolation time was shifted from 35 days to 14 days after birth, the abnormalities observed in (1) and (2) disappeared.Furthermore, (4) hypofunction of PH cells due to isolated breeding was observed only in the prefrontal cortex.
Here we find that in mice, social experience shortly after weaning is very important for the development of PH cells and higher brain functions.Since the same thing is expected in humans, if a drug that improves the function of nerve cells of this type is found, it can be expected to improve psychiatric symptoms in psychiatric disorders such as autism spectrum disorders.
