Effects of prenatal acute stress on the behavioural reactivity in handled and non-handled rat progeny

The effects of prenatal stress are dependent on the intensity and duration of the stress treatment: chronic, uncontrollable stress causes an impairment in the normal adaptive responses to physical and physiological stimuli whereas acute and mild stress facilitates the morphological development of fetal brain neurons. The presents study was designed to investigate whether a single stress exposure during pregnancy may exert a facilitatory effect on the behaviour of the juvenile progeny. The effects of a postnatal handling procedure have been also investigated. One-month prenatally stressed rats (PSR) whose dams had been restrained for 120 minutes at the 16th day of gestation, showed an increa…