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영어

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder and this disorder shows im-pairment in reciprocal social interactions, deficits in communication, and restrictive and repetitive patterns of behaviors and interests. The effect of music on short-term memory in the view of cell proliferation in the hippocampus was evaluated using valproic acid-induced autistic rat pups. Animal model of autism was made by subcutaneous injection of 400-mg/kg valproic acid into the rat pups on the postnatal day 14. The rat pups in the music-applied groups were exposed to the 65-dB com-fortable classic music for 1 hr once a day, starting postnatal day 15 and continued until postnatal day 28. In the present results, short-term memory was deteriorated by autism induction. The numbers of 5-bro-mo-2ʹ-deoxyridine (BrdU)-positive, Ki-67-positive, and doublecortin (DCX)-positive cells in the hippocampal dentate gyrus were decreased by autism induction. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and ty-rosine kinase B (TrkB) expressions in the hippocampus were also sup-pressed in the autistic rat pups. Music application alleviated short-term memory deficits with enhancing the numbers of BrdU-positive, Ki-67-positive, and DCX-positive cells in the autistic rat pups. Music ap-plication also enhanced BDNF and TrkB expressions in the autistic rat pups. The present study show that application of music enhanced hip-pocampal cell proliferation and alleviated short-term memory impair-ment through stimulating BDNF-TrkB signaling in the autistic rat pups. Music can be suggested as the therapeutic strategy to overcome the autism-induced memory deficits.