Propionic acid induced behavioural effects of relevance to autism spectrum disorder evaluated in the hole board test with rats.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a set of neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by abnormal social interactions, impaired language, and stereotypic and repetitive behaviours. Among genetically susceptible subpopulations, gut and dietary influences may play a role in etiology. Propionic acid (PPA), produced by enteric gut bacteria, crosses both the gut-blood and the blood-brain barrier. Previous research has demonstrated that repeated intracerebroventricular (ICV) infusions of PPA in adult rats produce behavioural and neuropathological changes similar to those seen in ASD patients, including hyperactivity, stereotypy, and repetitive movements. The current study examined dose and time related changes of exploratory and repetitive behaviours with the use of the hole-board task. Adult male Long-Evans rats received ICV infusions twice a day, 4 h apart, of either buffered PPA (low dose 0.052 M or high dose 0.26 M, pH 7.5, 4 µL/infusion) or phosphate buffered saline (PBS, 0.1 M) for 7 consecutive days. Locomotor activity and hole-poke behaviour were recorded daily in an automated open field apparatus (Versamax), equipped with 16 open wells, for 30 min immediately after the second infusion. In a dose dependent manner PPA infused rats displayed significantly more locomotor activity, stereotypic behaviour and nose-pokes than PBS infused rats. Low-dose PPA animals showed locomotor activity levels similar to those of PBS animals at the start of the infusion schedule, but gradually increased to levels comparable to those of high-dose PPA animals by the end of the infusion schedule, demonstrating a dose and time dependent effect of the PPA treatments.

The enteric bacterial metabolite propionic acid alters brain and plasma phospholipid molecular species: further development of a rodent model of autism spectrum disorders.

Gastrointestinal symptoms and altered blood phospholipid profiles have been reported in patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Most of the phospholipid analyses have been conducted on the fatty acid composition of isolated phospholipid classes following hydrolysis. A paucity of information exists on how the intact phospholipid molecular species are altered in ASD. We applied ESI/MS to determine how brain and blood intact phospholipid species were altered during the induction of ASD-like behaviors in rats following intraventricular infusions with the enteric bacterial metabolite propionic acid. Animals were infused daily for 8 days, locomotor activity assessed, and animals killed during the induced behaviors. Propionic acid infusions increased locomotor activity. Lipid analysis revealed treatment altered 21 brain and 30 blood phospholipid molecular species. Notable alterations were observed in the composition of brain SM, diacyl mono and polyunsaturated PC, PI, PS, PE, and plasmalogen PC and PE molecular species. These alterations suggest that the propionic acid rat model is a useful tool to study aberrations in lipid metabolism known to affect membrane fluidity, peroxisomal function, gap junction coupling capacity, signaling, and neuroinflammation, all of which may be associated with the pathogenesis of ASD.

Discriminating famous from fictional names based on lifetime experience: evidence in support of a signal-detection model based on finite mixture distributions.

It is widely accepted that signal-detection mechanisms contribute to item-recognition memory decisions that involve discriminations between targets and lures based on a controlled laboratory study episode. Here, the authors employed mathematical modeling of receiver operating characteristics (ROC) to determine whether and how a signal-detection mechanism contributes to discriminations between moderately famous and fictional names based on lifetime experience. Unique to fame judgments is a lack of control over participants' previous exposure to the stimuli deemed "targets" by the experimenter; specifically, if they pertain to moderately famous individuals, participants may have had no prior exposure to a substantial proportion of the famous names presented. The authors adopted established models from the recognition-memory literature to examine the quantitative fit that could be obtained through the inclusion of signal-detection and threshold mechanisms for two data sets. They first established that a signal-detection process operating on graded evidence is critical to account for the fame judgment data they collected. They then determined whether the graded memory evidence for famous names would best be described with one distribution with greater variance than that for the fictional names, or with two finite mixture distributions for famous names that correspond to items with or without prior exposure, respectively. Analyses revealed that a model that included a d' parameter, as well as a mixture parameter, provided the best compromise between number of parameters and quantitative fit. Additional comparisons between this equal-variance signal-detection mixture model and a dual-process model, which included a high-threshold process in addition to a signal-detection process, also favored the former model. In support of the conjecture that the mixture parameter captures participants' prior experience, the authors found that it was increased when the analysis was restricted to names in occupational categories for which participants indicated high exposure.