Altered adult behavior following chronic drug administration during infancy and prepuberty.

Abstract

Beginning at 4 days of age, rats received injections of reserpine, deanol, or saline, daily for 40 days. Thereafter open-field behavior, discrimination learning, and maze learning were measured. There were some group differences on measures of emotionality, and both drug groups were inferior to controls on visual form discrimination. The results are thought to increase the credibility of a "nonassociationistic, nonlearning mechanism in the early-experience phenomena." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)