Ethanol has a number of effects in the central nervous systemand especially in the developing brain. During pregnancy alcohol consumption leads to a wide range of both functional and morphological disorders of the fetus nervous system with subsequent alteration of memory and learning processes (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). One of the main reasons for these disturbances is the neuronal apoptosis, which occurs when reaching toxic blood ethanol concentration (above 200 mg/dl). The experiments onbrain slicesrevealed that ethanol has an inhibitory effect on the electrical activity, activates GABA and inhibits NMDA receptors.
The main objective of the project was to study the neurotoxic ethanol effects on spontaneous and evoked electrical activity in the developing brain of the newborn rats. The experiments were conducted on new born Wistar rat sranging in age from postnatal day (P) 5 to P7 which thalamocortical development corresponds to human preterm infants (over the age of 25 gestational weeks). All experiments were carried out in accordance with ethical requirements for working with laboratory animals.
The study was supported by the Government of the Russian Federation (grant for leading scientists No. 11.G34.31.0075) and by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research № 14-04-31344