Abstract
Studies on the effects of dietary deficiencies have shown marked behavioral impairments in rats deprived of adequate quantities of specific vitamins. In at least one study, such impairment was evident even when body weight did not differ from vitamin-supplemented but pair-fed controls. Recently, experiments have demonstrated that restriction of maternal dietary intake during gestation and lactation results in a variety of physiological and behavioral abnormalities in the progeny. These offspring are stunted, retarded in neuromotor development, impaired in ability to learn a maze, slow in extinction of the conditional reflex and show a low level of exploratory activity, a high degree of emotional behavior and marked anti-social interaction. Furthermore, patterns of change with increasing age in some of these measurements also distinguish these experimental animals from controls born of adequately-fed dams.
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Chow, B.F., Simonson, M., Hanson, H.M. et al. Behavioral measurements in nutritional studies. Conditional Reflex 6, 36–40 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03000265
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03000265