Perinatal undernutrition attenuates field excitatory postsynaptic potentials and influences dendritic spine density and morphology in hippocampus of male rat offspring

Perinatal undernutrition affects the hippocampus, a brain region crucial for learning and memory. However, far less is known about the changes of dendritic spine density and morphology related to hippocampal synaptic plasticity. As dendritic spines are dynamic structures essential for synaptic plasticity and serve as the primary post-synaptic location of the excitatory neurotransmission that underlies learning and memory, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether the perinatal undernutrition affected hippocampal synaptic plasticity accompanied by the change of dendritic spines in anesthetized rats. An input-output curve was first determined using the measurements of field excitatory postsynaptic potential (fEPSP) slope in response to a series of stimulation intensities. Long-term potentiation (LTP) induced by high-frequency stimulation was recorded in the Schaffer collateral-CA1 pathway. Post-tetanic potentiation derived from the fEPSP slope was also measured immediately after LTP induction. Quantitative data of dendritic spines from hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells were obtained using Golgi staining. The results showed that 50% perinatal food restriction (FR50) impaired the magnitude of LTP of the fEPSP slope in the Schaffer collateral-CA1 pathway. Additionally, FR50 reduced overall spine densities in both basal dendrites and apical dendrites of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells. Moreover, FR50 reduced type densities of thin and mushroom spines in apical dendrites, whereas a reduction in the type of mushroom spines was only observed in the basal dendrites of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells. These findings suggested that perinatal undernutrition decreased excitatory synaptic input and further affected the processing of information in a given network by selectively reducing the number of special dendritic spines. Thus, these changes in the density and the types of dendritic spines in CA1 pyramidal neurons may partly explain the impaired hippocampal synaptic plasticity as well as learning and memory disturbances commonly observed during undernourished rats.