Abstract：
Impaired decision-making constitutes a fundamental issue in numerous psychiatric disorders. Extensive research has established that early life adversity (ELA) increases vulnerability to psychiatric disorders later in life. ELA in human neonates is associated with changes in cognitive, emotional, as well as reward-related processing. Maternal separation (MS) is an established animal model of ELA and has been shown to be associated with decision-making deficits. On the other hand, enriched environment (EE) and intranasal oxytocin (OT) administration have been demonstrated to have beneficial effects on decision-making in humans or animals. Given these considerations, our investigation sought to explore the impact of brief exposure to EE and intranasal OT administration on the decision-making abilities of adolescent rats that had experienced MS during infancy. The experimental protocol involved subjecting rat pups to the MS regimen for 180 min per day from postnatal day (PND) 1 to PND 21. Then, from PND 22 to PND 34, the rats were exposed to EE and/or received intranasal OT (2 μg/μl) for seven days. The assessment of decision-making abilities, using a rat gambling task (RGT), commenced during adolescence. Our findings revealed that MS led to impaired decision-making and a decreased percentage of advantageous choices. However, exposure to brief EE or intranasal OT administration mitigated the deficits induced by MS and improved the decision-making skills of maternally-separated rats. Furthermore, combination of these treatments did not yield additional benefits. These results suggest that EE and OT may hold promise as therapeutic interventions to enhance certain aspects of cognitive performance.
摘要：
决策障碍是许多精神疾病的基本问题。广泛的研究已经确定，早期生活逆境（ELA）增加了生命后期对精神疾病的脆弱性。人类新生儿的ELA与认知变化有关，情感,以及与奖励相关的处理。母体分离（MS）是建立的ELA动物模型，已被证明与决策缺陷有关。另一方面,已证明富集环境（EE）和鼻内催产素（OT）给药对人类或动物的决策具有有益作用。鉴于这些考虑,我们的研究旨在探讨短暂接触EE和鼻内注射OT对婴儿期发生MS的青春期大鼠决策能力的影响.实验方案涉及从出生后第1天到PND21天对大鼠幼崽进行MS方案,每天180分钟。然后，从PND22到PND34,将大鼠暴露于EE和/或接受鼻内OT(2μg/μl)7天。决策能力的评估，使用老鼠赌博任务(RGT)，从青春期开始。我们的发现表明，MS导致决策受损，有利选择的比例下降。然而,短暂的EE或鼻内OT给药减轻了MS引起的缺陷，并提高了母系分离大鼠的决策能力。此外，这些治疗的组合没有产生额外的益处.这些结果表明，EE和OT可能有望作为治疗性干预措施来增强认知表现的某些方面。
