Single intense prenatal stress reduce behavioural suppression in an operant conflict paradigm in the adult progeny. Influence of Metyrapone administration

Stressors presented during late prenatal period can have long-term effects on offspring behaviour (1). Indeed we showed that in the rat progeny a single immobilization procedure at gestational day 16 enhances spatial learning in a non-aversive, rewarded-facilitated learning task, the Can Test, and decreases anxiety-like behaviour in the elevated plus maze (2). In this study, we wanted to investigate: (i) the effects of a single prenatal immobilization-stress on the operant conflict task (OCT), an anxiety-related procedure, in which positively reinforced responses are suppressed by contingent punishment (3); (ii) the expression of mineralcorticoid and glucocorticoid receptors (MRs, GRs) in t…