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Behavioral And Neurobiological Evidence Of Epigenetic Transmission In The Neonatal Quinpirole Rodent Model Of Schizophrenia, Wesley Gill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Quinpirole is a dopamine D2 receptor agonist that if administered to rats from postnatal day (P)1-21 results in increased dopamine D2 receptor sensitivity throughout the animal’s lifetime. This increase in receptor sensitivity is consistent with schizophrenia. This model has additional consistencies with human schizophrenia, including sensorimotor gating deficits, enhanced behavioral and neurobiological responses to nicotine, and protein alterations consistent with the disorder. In this study, a second generation of the neonatal quinpirole (NQ) rodent model was created to investigate if long term changes caused by NQ treatment would be passed to offspring. NQ treated rats were mated and their offspring …