Long-lasting housing environment manipulation and acute loss of environmental enrichment impact BALB/c mice behaviour in multiple functional domains.

Understanding environmental influences on individuals' behaviour is challenging. Here we have investigated the housing impact of 9 weeks of enriched environment (EE) and social isolation (SI) and the impact of abrupt deprivation of EE (enrichment removal: ER) on BALB/c mice. Compared with the widely used C57BL/6 strain in research, BALB/c synthesises serotonin less efficiently due to a genetic variation and thus may potentially represent human populations at higher risk of stress-related disorders. We assessed the effects of EE and SI by conducting a behavioural test battery and the effects of acute ER by monitoring homecage activities and social behaviour. We found that EE and SI impact BALB/c's physiological states and behavioural performances from lower to higher cognitive processes: increased body weight, increased rectal temperature, altered performance in motor and sensory tasks, the activity level in a novel environment and altered performance in tests of anxiety-like behaviour, stress-coping strategies and learning and memory. Furthermore, acute ER triggered stress/frustration-like behaviour in BALB/c, with increased aggression, increased social distancing and disrupted daily/nightly activities. Our results demonstrate that long-lasting housing manipulation such as EE and SI, impact behaviour via multilayered processes over a wide range of functional domains, and unforeseen change to a negative environment, ER, is a major stressor that causes behavioural and psychological consequences through environment-gene interactions, a model of direct relevance to human health.

Crocetin Alleviates Ovariectomy-Induced Metabolic Dysfunction through Regulating Estrogen Receptor ß.

Metabolic dysfunction (MD) is a major health problem threatening the life quality of menopausal women. Saffron has been widely used in herb prescriptions for treating menopausal syndrome. However, the pharmacological effects and mechanisms of saffron are poorly understood. Here, we investigated the effect of crocin, the major ingredient of saffron and its active metabolite in blood, crocetin, on MD and lipid metabolism in ovariectomized (OVX) mice and 3T3-L1 adipocytes. The present study showed that intragastric treatment of crocin prevented weight gain, fat accumulation, and insulin resistance in OVX mice by increasing energy expenditure and fat oxidation. Mechanistically, crocin influenced adipose tissue homeostasis by regulating adipogenic and lipolytic factors, which was strongly associated with the restoration of the downregulated ERß function in white adipose tissue (WAT). In vitro, crocetin facilitated lipid metabolism in an ERß-dependent manner. Our results demonstrated the beneficial effects of crocetin/crocin-mediated intervention against metabolic dysfunction, revealing a prospective therapeutic application in menopausal women.

The effects of Hebb repetition learning and temporal grouping in immediate serial recall of spatial location.

The Hebb repetition effect is a phenomenon in which a repeated presentation of the same list increases the performance in immediate serial recall. This provided the theoretical basis for a core assumption of the Atkinson and Shiffrin model regarding information transfer from short-term memory to long-term memory. The Hebb repetition effect was originally reported for the verbal domain, but subsequent studies found similar phenomena using visuospatial paradigms, for example, in serial-order memory for dot locations. The present study examined in two experiments the effects of presentation timing of nine spatial locations on Hebb repetition learning. In Experiment 1, the Hebb repetition effects were observed for spatial locations with constant timing presentation as well as temporal grouping presentation. In the latter condition, all lists were presented with the same temporal structure, that is, temporal pauses were inserted after the third and sixth serial positions. This manipulation led to a better recall performance in comparison with the constant presentation, but did not interact with the repetition. In Experiment 2, the Hebb list was presented with a different temporal structure in every repetition in the random-grouping condition. Although this manipulation is known to eliminate or weaken the Hebb effect in the verbal domain, we observed stable repetition effects in this experiment. This suggests that there might be some domain-specific mechanisms in Hebb repetition learning. These results may facilitate the development of theories of the relationship between short-term and long-term memory.