Prenatal Cocaine: Translational Effects on Human and Rodent Neonatal Vocalizations (2010)
Undergraduates: George Jones, Elizabeth Cox, Matthew McMurray, Sarah Williams Josephine Johns
Faculty Advisor: Josephine Johns
Department: Biostatistics
In past studies, altered neonatal vocalizations have been a common fundamental difference between various animal models used in studying neurodevelopmental disorders. As studies suggest vocalizations can be used as an early predictive behavioral tool but there is still a huge debate as to their physiological relevance to human infant behavior. To bridge the gap between the translational study of rodent and human vocalizations, human and rodent neonatal vocalizations need to be directly compared. This study measured vocalizations following prenatal cocaine exposure in Sprague Dawley rat pups at postnatal day (PND) 14, an age speculated to be translational to one month human infants. Upon conception, pregnant female rats were divided into three different groups: chronic cocaine (treated daily through gestation), chronic saline (matched to cocaine treatment paradigm), or untreated. On postnatal day (PND) 14, one male and female pup was removed from the litter and vocalizations recorded following a parallel elicitation protocol that is currently being conducted in human one-month infants in the lab. Analysis of PND 14 vocalizations are now being completed. Understanding what acoustic measures are translational between humans and rodents has large potential for advancing the field and future studies of these parallel behavioral markers in neonates can be further studied.