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Date of Award

Spring 2013

Document Type

Restricted Thesis: Campus only access

First Advisor

Dr. Craig Kinsley

Abstract

The purpose of this experiment was to learn more about the effects of endogenous IGF-II expression on learning and memory in rats, and how the IGF-II molecule affects mother, virgin female, and male rats differently. It was expected that IGF-II expression would be greater in the CA1 area of the hippocampus for maternal rats, and that this increased expression would correlate with significantly better performance on a spatial memory task for mothers relative to the other groups. The results revealed that mothers demonstrate non-significantly better spatial memory than virgin and male rats, and did not have significantly different levels of IGF-II expression. A non-significant trend in the data showed that c-Fos was down regulated in mothers and with a larger sample size this effect could have been significant.

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