Early enriched housing results in partial recovery of memory deficits in female, but not in male, rats after neonatal hypoxia–ischemia

Our previous results indicated that stimulation by daily environmental enrichment (EE) recovered memory deficits without affecting hippocampus damage in adult male rats submitted to neonatal hypoxia–ischemia (HI). The present study investigated whether early continuous housing in an enriched environment would be effective in preventing spatial and recognition memory both in adolescent and adult female and male rats, as well as the possible benefits of continuous EE in alleviating hippocampal and striatal atrophy consequent to the neonatal HI. Wistar rats in the 7th PND were submitted to the HI and, in the day after, were housed in an enriched environment (8th–30th PND). Subsequently, performance of animals in the novel-object recognition and in two water maze tasks was assessed; in adulthood, animals' behavior was reassessed in the water maze. Rats were sacrificed and both hippocampal volume and striatal area were estimated following the completion of behavioral study. Post-HI cognitive deficits in the object recognition test were completely recovered by the EE. However, memory impairment in the water maze was only partially prevented by EE; this effect was observed especially in female rats on the working memory protocol. As for the morphological assessment, there was no enrichment effect over the loss of hippocampus volume and striatum area. In conclusion, present data indicate that early housing in EE caused performance recovery in object recognition and a partial improvement in the working memory spatial task in adolescent females after neonatal HI; however no effects of enrichment were revealed in adult animal's performance or in the extension of tissue atrophy of hippocampus and striatum consequent to HI.