Projeções córtico-corticais do córtex auditivo primário de ratos modelo de autismo.

Abstract

The Critical Period (CP) is a postnatal time when cortical development is highly susceptible to plasticity induced by environmental stimuli. For each sensory, motor, and cognitive maturation, a different critical period is promoted. Events that occur during the CP then have important impacts on the formation of cortical maps of sensory processing, as well as on individual perception during their lifetime. Knowing that, some neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), may present from phenotypic alterations, with typical facial patterns, to sensorimotor changes, which together can generate social deficits of different gradations in the affected individual. The Objective of the present study was to investigate the CP of post-natal development in autism models rats by analysing cortico-cortical connections. We suggest that: 1) the communication deficits and sensory alterations observed in this disorder may be related, in part, to the opening and/or closing time of the altered CP in the sensory cortex Primary Auditory (A1), and 2) to changes in the development of afferent connections in this cortex (A1). Therefore, we propose the study of afferences to A1 in autism model rats and also in control rats (saline injection) on the first postnatal day (P0.5), by introducing, post-mortem, retrograde neurotracer. It was observed that A1 receives axonal projections from various cortical regions, such as frontal, motor and insula. Accordingly to this findings, it was found that there is no specificity in the afferent cortical connections to A1 on day P0.5, but data are shown unfinished because they do not include the control group in the analysis.