Gender-dependent differences in latent inhibition following prenatal stress and corticosterone administration

Latent inhibition (LI) indexes an organisms' ability to ignore irrelevant stimuli. Its disruption in the rat is considered to provide an animal model of the impaired ability to ignore irrelevant stimuli in schizophrenia. Given the importance of neurodevelopmental factors in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, the present experiments investigated the effects of restraint, exposure to inescapable footshock and corticosterone administration during the last trimester of pregnancy, on the development of LI in the adult male and female offspring. Prenatal restraint had no effect on LI in the adult offspring of both sexes. Inescapable footshock exposure and corticosterone administration led to LI disruption in the male, but not the female offspring. These gender-dependent effects of prenatal treatments on LI suggest that it may provide a neurodevelopmental model of at least a sub-group of schizophrenia, in which environmental factors and gender are considered to play a significant role.