A dissociação do ritmo circadiano da atividade locomotora em um ciclo claro-escuro de 22 horas não induz o comportamento do tipo ansioso, nem prejudica a memória aversiva de ratos Wistar adolescentes

Abstract

Introduction: Adolescence is a crucial period of development, in which the body presents a high level of plasticity. At the present time, adolescents spend more time active and exposed to light at night reducing the amount of daily sleep. To investigate the possible effects of this condition on anxiety and aversive memory, adolescent rats underwent the Open Field (OF) and Passive Avoidance (PA) tasks under a 22h EC cycle. Objective: To evaluate the effects of a 22h light dark (LD) cycle on the locomotor activity of adolescent rats anxiety and aversive memory. Methods: 44 male Wistar rats were divided into two groups: T24, n = 13 (EC 12:12 h) and T22, n = 31 (EC 11:11 h), which were kept under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity, with water and food at will. The tests were performed in the middle of the dark phase for all groups, but the T22 group was subdivided into two groups that performed the tests, respectively: in the middle of the night coincidence between the environment and the biological night of each T22 mouse (n = 16) and in the middle of the night of non-coincidence (n= 15). The OF and PA tasks were performed when the animals had between 40 and 60 days. All sessions were recorded for total distance travelled, total time, velocity and minimum and maximum anxiety indexes (OP), and latency to step down from a platform in PA after 30 min for both groups and after 24 h (For the T24 group) and 22 h (for the T22 group) for evaluation of the short and long term memories, respectively. The locomotor activity was recorded continuously and totalized at 5 min intervals. To compare the means between the groups in the OF test, a 1-way ANOVA was performed for independent samples and the Kruskal Wallis test for PA. Results: T22 animals presented two simultaneous circadian rhythms in locomotor activity: one with the same period of the LD cycle and another that was expressed in free-stroke. All animals in the control group synchronized to LD 24h, showing a stable rhythm synchronized to LD. No differences were found in the performance of the groups in the OF and PA. Conclusions: The T22h promotes dissociation in the circadian rhythm of locomotor activity without altering the levels of anxiety or impairing the aversive memory of adolescent rats.