Date
11-11-2026
Department
School of Health Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Anatomy & Cell Biology (PhD)
Chair
Kayla Gilley-Connor
Keywords
maternal diet, Mediterranean diet, Western diet, offspring, cognitive function, affective behavior, dendritic arborization
Disciplines
Neuroscience and Neurobiology
Recommended Citation
Frommack, Abigail Noelle, "If You Give a Mouse A Cookie: Impact of a Prenatal Mediterranean Diet on Offspring Neurobiological and Behavioral Outcomes" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 9079.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/9079
Abstract
In a 4x2 factorial design, this study assessed the impact of four maternal diets on offspring neurobiological and behavioral outcomes by sex. This study aimed to fill significant gaps in the literature by characterizing these outcomes in the understudied maternal Mediterranean diet (MD), while comparing it to a well characterized maternal Western diet (WD). Adult offspring were assessed for anxiety- and depressive-like phenotypes, as well as short- and long-term memory and executive function performance. Sexually dimorphic responses were seen, with very few significant differences observed in male offspring. For affective domains, the male WD offspring showed a potential depressive-like phenotype in the marble burying (MB) task, while female MD offspring displayed anxiety-like behavior in MB, although no significant anxiety-like results were found in the open field (OF) task for any offspring. For cognitive domains, female MD offspring showed improved long-term spatial memory function through prolonged time in the goal quadrant during the water maze (WM) probe task. Neurobiological outcomes showed robust hippocampal gene expression differences in male offspring, assessed through differential expression and gene ontology (GO) analysis following RNA sequencing. qPCR results show little significance in relative fold change in male and female offspring. Female MD offspring showed reduced dendritic arborization in the CA1 region of the hippocampus. While the results are mixed, the maternal diet manipulation showed lasting outcomes in the adult offspring. These results would be strengthened by additional behavioral measurements and greater sample size. These results build on a foundation of preclinical research that translates to human models, aiming to improve offspring outcomes through maternal lifestyle adjustments.
