Faculty Mentor(s)

Dr. Leah Chase, Biology and Chemistry; Dr. Andrew Gall, Psychology and Neuroscience

Document Type

Poster

Event Date

4-12-2024

Abstract

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a neuropsychological disorder featuring cyclical periods of depressive and manic behaviors. The Chase lab aims to develop a reliable animal model for BD in order to characterize its critical neurological triggers. Previous work has shown that daily injection of rat pups from postnatal day 3 through 19 (P3-P19) with homocysteic acid (HCA) produces a mixed manic and depressive state after puberty. These behaviors can be reversed by lithium treatment and involve changes in gene expression in the prefrontal cortex that are also improperly regulated in BD. Despite this model's reproducibility, we observed critical changes in the behavior of HCA-treated rats analyzed during the summer of 2021, such that animals exhibited more manic behaviors than depressive behaviors. Upon further analysis, we discovered that pups in the 2021 cohort weighed 1.3-2.0 g more than previous cohorts on the first day of injection, suggesting that the 2021 pups were about two days older than the vendor indicated. Our current study focuses on measuring behavior in rats given daily HCA injections beginning postnatal day 5, rather than postnatal day 3, in order to determine the effects of a delayed treatment period. We hypothesize that this adjusted exposure window matches that of the 2021 cohort and will thus produce similar resulting behaviors. Ultimately, this work will allow us to understand how timing of HCA exposure impacts associated behavioral changes and may provide a better understanding of behavior variations associated with bipolar disorder.

Comments

This work was supported by the Schaap Science Undergraduate Research Fund, the Wolterink Prize, and the Hope College Global Health Program.

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