Differential effect of age on the brain fatty acid levels and their correlation with animal cognitive status in mice

Date

2012-11-01

Author

Yetimler, Berrak
Ulusoy, Gokhan
Celik, Turgay
Jakubowska-Dogru, Ewa

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

162
views

0
downloads

The aim of the present study was to investigate the possible relationship between the levels of various fatty acids (FA) in the brain and learning indices in aged (22-23 months old) and young (2-3 months old) female Swiss Webster (SW) mice. The mice were classified as "good" or "poor" learners based on their performance in a spatial learning task: the Morris Water Maze. The levels of several FA including palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, arachidonic (AA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), were measured by gas chromatography in tissue samples from four different brain areas: hippocampus, frontal cortex, striatum and hypothalamus. The results of behavioral tests confirmed a decline in learning skills with age. However, a great individual variation was revealed in learning scores between aged subjects, indicating that biological aging does not always parallel chronological aging. The relative levels of particular fatty acids across the four examined brain structures were very similar. Interestingly, only in the hypothalamus was the DHA omega-3 acid level significantly higher in young mice compared to the old mice. For the remaining brain structures, no significant correlations were found between the DHA level and the animal's age and/or cognitive status. A significant correlation between learning performance and fatty acid levels in the brain was found only for AA in the young mice hippocampus, a structure known to be critical for spatial learning and memory. The AA level was significantly lower in young "good" learners compared to both young "poor" and old "good" learners with young "good" learners showing significantly better performance than the two other groups. These findings contribute to the current debate on the value of DHA supplementation as an effective protective treatment against senile dementia and the potential role of AA in memory deficits.

Subject Keywords

Young and old mice, Spatial learning, Brain fatty acids, Gas chromatography

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/67428

Journal

PHARMACOLOGY BIOCHEMISTRY AND BEHAVIOR

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbb.2012.07.009

Collections

Department of Biology, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Investigation of the potential correlation between the cognitive performance and levels of brain fatty acids in young and aged mice Yetimler, Berrak; Jakubowska Doğru, Ewa; Department of Biological Sciences (2011) The aim of the present study was to elucidate the possible relationship between the levels of various brain fatty acids and learning indices in aged and young mice classified as “good” or “poor” learners basing on their performance in a spatial learning task, the Morris Water Maze. The levels of several fatty acids including palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, arachidonic acid (AA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) were measured using gas chromatography separately in samples from four different brain areas: hi...
Study on the molecular basis of individual variation in spatial memory in rats Gökçek Saraç, Çiğdem; Jakubowska Doğru, Ewa; Adalı, Orhan; Department of Biology (2012) Despite very extensive studies related to molecular processes underlying memory formation, still little known about the potential differences in the brain biochemistry between “good” and “poor” learners belonging to a random population of young animals. In the present study, an attempt was taken to correlate the individual variation in short- and long-term spatial memory in three different lines of young, healthy rats: inbred Wistar (W), outcrossed Wistar/Spraque Dawley (W/S) and pigmented Long-Evans rats, ...
Relationship between the hippocampal expression of selected cytochrome P450 isoforms and the animal performance in the hippocampus-dependent learning task Gjota-Ergin, Sena; Gokcek-Sarac, Cigdem; Adalı, Orhan; Jakubowska-Dogru, Ewa (2018-04-23) Despite very extensive studies on the molecular mechanisms of memory formation, relatively little is known about the molecular correlates of individual variation in the learning skills within a random population of young normal subjects. The role of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes in the brain also remains poorly understood. On the other hand, these enzymes are known to be related to the metabolism of substances important for neural functions including steroids, fatty acids, and retinoic acid. In the present ...
Analysis of immunoreactivity of NOS isoforms (nNOS, eNOS, iNOS) in hippocampus of young rats classified as good and poor learners Keçecioğlu, Ekin; Jakubowska Doğru, Ewa; Department of Biology (2012) Despite very extensive studies on molecular mechanisms of learning and memory formation it is little known about individual variation in the learning skills within a random animal population and about the differences in the brain biochemistry behind this variation. In the present study, we have focused on the expression and distribution of nitric oxide synthase (NOS), one of the molecules implemented in activity-dependent neuroplasticity, in the rat hippocampus, the structure critical for episodic memory in...
Meta analysis of alzheimer’s disease at the gene expression level İzgi, Hamit; Somel, Mehmet; Department of Biology (2017) In this study, publicly available microarray gene expression datasets are used to investigate common gene expression changes in different postmortem brain regions in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) patients compared to control subjects, and to find possible functional associations related to these changes. The hypothesis is that pathogenesis of the disease converges into common patterns of dysregulation/alteration or dysfunction in molecular pathways across different brain regions in AD. In total, I studied 13 dat...

Citation Formats

B. Yetimler, G. Ulusoy, T. Celik, and E. Jakubowska-Dogru, “Differential effect of age on the brain fatty acid levels and their correlation with animal cognitive status in mice,” PHARMACOLOGY BIOCHEMISTRY AND BEHAVIOR, pp. 53–59, 2012, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/67428.