Taurine Recovers Mice Emotional Learning and Memory Disruptions Associated with Fragile X Syndrome in Context Fear and Auditory Cued-Conditioning

Abstract

Previously, we have assessed the administration of chronic taurine (i.e. 0.05 % w/v for >4 weeks [c-Tau]) producing anxiogenic neurobehaviors, whereas acute taurine (i.e. 43 mg/kg/s.c. [a-Tau]) induces anxiolytic outcomes on anxiety based measures of behavior in the FVB/NJ mouse strain. Here we compared our findings with the FVB/NJ Fragile X knock out mouse (KO), the most inheritable form of intellectual disability characterized by a reduced efficiency in GABAergic signaling, to assess whether or not taurine, a GABA_AR agonist, (i.e. acute and chronic) could stabilize and recover the emotional learning and memory profiles consistent with wild type (WT) mice. When compared to WT mice, KO mice exhibited reduced learning on the context fear task over four trials. Interestingly, both KO a-Tau and KO c-Tau evidenced recovered emotional learning acquisition during the context fear task when compared to KO which was comparable to WT; with marked improvements in the KO a-Tau condition more than the KO c-Tau. In addition, memory retention was increased in the KO a-Tau condition when compared to KO, while KO c-Tau was not significantly affected. These findings suggest that KO a-Tau treatment can be utilized as a potential pharmacotherapeutic intervention for treating KO’s in enhancing GABAergic modulation of emotional learning conditions consistent with this genetic disorder.