Abstract: The experiment was designed to investigate the effect of early maternal deprivation on cognition and memory in rats. The neonatal SD rats were divided into two groups randomly, the control group and the early maternal deprivation group. All rats were tested in the different behavioral paradigms in adult period. No significant difference was measured in locomotor activity and exploration between two groups in the open field test. In the novel object recognition test， there was also no significant difference in exploratory preference to the novel object. However, compared with the controls， rats in the early maternal deprivation group exhibited short escape latency in the passive avoidance test, suggesting early maternal deprivation impairs fear memory of rats. These results indicate that early maternal deprivation may impair amygdala-dependent emotional memory in rats.

Key words: passive avoidance, novel object recognition, early maternal deprivation, passive avoidance, novel object recognition