What question did this study set out to answer?

To examine the impact of a Western-style diet on episodic and spatial memory and to evaluate dendritic complexity in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex of male rats.

October 17, 2017Nutritional Neuroscience

Western-style diet induces object recognition deficits and alters complexity of dendritic arborization in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex of male rats

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To examine the impact of a Western-style diet on episodic and spatial memory and to evaluate dendritic complexity in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex of male rats.
Male Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 18) were fed either a standard control diet or a Western-style diet (WSD).
Cognitive testing was conducted using the Morris Water Maze for spatial memory and the novel object recognition (NOR) task for episodic memory.
Brain tissue was processed using the Golgi-Cox method to image, digitally reconstruct, and analyze neurons in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex via Sholl analysis.
WSD-fed rats showed significant elevations in percent body fat and inflammatory TNFα levels compared to control animals.
Rats fed a WSD exhibited significantly reduced NOR exploration ratios, indicating episodic memory deficits, while spatial memory performance remained intact.
Overall dendritic length and branch point numbers did not differ between groups, but Sholl analysis revealed significantly increased neuronal complexity specifically in the entorhinal cortex of WSD-fed rats.

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Implication

Controlled animal study finds recognition memory deficits and increased entorhinal dendritic complexity in male rats fed a Western diet, suggesting impaired synaptic pruning.

Cite This Study

Sarfert et al. (2017) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a1eb00f99b676b6b9af2b98 https://doi.org/10.1080/1028415x.2017.1388557

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Implication

Controlled animal study finds recognition memory deficits and increased entorhinal dendritic complexity in male rats fed a Western diet, suggesting impaired synaptic pruning.

Western-style diet induces object recognition deficits and alters complexity of dendritic arborization in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex of male rats

Key Points

Discussion

Implication

Cite This Study

Western-style diet induces object recognition deficits and alters complexity of dendritic arborization in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex of male rats

Key Points

Discussion

Implication

Cite This Study

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