Fig. 2.
Neonatal novelty exposure increased adult functionality. Black bars, Novel rats; gray bars, Home rats. (a) Novel rats showed greater OTL compared with Home rats when first exposed to the working memory version of the Morris water task (Left). Both groups performed at the same level at the end of testing, indicating a lack of differences in motivation and sensorimotor function (Right). Novel, n = 33; Home, n = 35. (b) Compared with Home rats, Novel rats showed a selective increase in CORT response to an unexpected 1-min exposure to an open field between T1 and T2 (RU; Left) but not in CORT response to an expected swim stressor (RE; Right). Novel, n = 17; Home, n = 14. (c) Novel rats showed a greater rightward turning bias than Home rats (Left), indexed by a greater lateralization score (L-score), a difference most prominent during the 1st min of testing (Right). Novel, n = 24; Home, n = 24. (d) Novel rats won more chocolate rewards than Home rats when competing against a conspecific (Left). Novel and Home rats did not differ in the number of chocolate rewards obtained when no competitor was present (Right). Novel, n = 24; Home, n = 24.