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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2016

Impact of perinatal nutrition on spatial cognitive performance of pigs later in life

Résumé

Perinatal nutrition can program cognitive functions in mammals. Accordingly, excessive intakeof dietary fat and/or sugar during pregnancy and/or lactation has been found to alter learningand memory of offspring in rodents. Little is known, however, on the impact of perinatalnutrition, and the most sensitive period (prenatal or postnatal) for dietary programming ofcognition in the domestic pig. We investigated the effects of prenatal vs postnatal exposureto a high-fat high-sugar (HFHS) diet on cognition of pigs. Thirty-two sows and their litterswere allocated to 1 of 4 dietary treatments in a 2×2 factorial design, with 8-week prenatal(gestation) and 8-week postnatal (lactation and post-weaning) exposure to a HFHS diet orcontrol (standard commercial) diets as factors. From weaning onwards (4 weeks of age), 3piglets per litter were selected and housed in pens of 3 littermates. Starting 3 weeks after thedietary intervention, piglets were subjected to a spatial cognitive hole-board task, in which theyhad to discriminate 4 baited buckets out of 16 in a fixed configuration. After 28 acquisitiontrials, piglets were subjected to 16 reversal trials, in which the configuration was changed.Reference memory (RM) score was calculated as the ratio between the number of visits tothe set of baited buckets and the number of visits to all buckets, and working memory (WM)score as the ratio between the number of different buckets visited and the total number of (re)visits. Data were analysed using a mixed model with pen as experimental unit. In both phasesof the task, WM and RM scores increased over trials (P<0.001). Compared to controls, pigletsexposed to the prenatal HFHS diet showed higher WM scores (0.79±0.01 vs 0.77±0.01, P=0.05)in the acquisition phase, and a trend for higher WM (0.83±0.01 vs 0.81±0.01, P=0.08) and RM(0.39±0.01 vs 0.37±0.01, P=0.06) scores in the reversal phase. In both phases, piglets exposed tothe prenatal HFHS diet made fewer visits in total (acquisition: 14.9±0.36 vs 16.1±0.31, P=0.02and reversal: 14.0±0.48 vs 15.4±0.46, P=0.04) and tended to have longer inter-visit intervalsthan controls (acquisition: 6.03±0.66 vs 4.74±0.40 sec, P=0.07 and reversal: 4.80±0.58 vs3.64±0.19 sec, P=0.05), suggesting that enhanced motivation did not explain their improvedcognitive performance. No effect of the postnatal diet or its interaction with the prenatal dietwas found. Our study highlights the key role of late prenatal, but not postnatal, nutrition forprogramming of spatial memory in pigs, which may impact their ability to cope with later lifechallenges.
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Dates et versions

hal-01409509 , version 1 (05-12-2016)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01409509 , version 1
  • PRODINRA : 369851

Citer

Caroline Clouard, Bas Kemp, Walter J. J. Gerrits, David Val-Laillet, Elizabeth Bolhuis. Impact of perinatal nutrition on spatial cognitive performance of pigs later in life. 50. Meeting of the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE), Jul 2016, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-01409509⟩
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