Obesogenic diet induces sex-specific alterations of contextual fear memory and associated hippocampal activity in mice

In addition to metabolic and cardiovascular disorders, obesity is associated with cognitive deficits in humans and animal models. We have previously shown that obesogenic high-fat and sugar diet intake during adolescence (adoHFSD) impairs hippocampus (HPC)-dependent memory in rodents. These results were obtained in males only and it remains to evaluate whether adoHFSD has similar effect in females. Therefore, here, we investigated the effects of adoHFSD consumption on HPC-dependent contextual fear memory and associated brain activation in male and female mice. Exposure to adoHFSD increased fat mass accumulation and glucose levels in both males and females but impaired contextual fear memory only in males. Compared with females, contextual fear conditioning induced higher neuronal activation in the dorsal and ventral HPC (CA1 and CA3 subfields) as well as in the medial prefrontal cortex in males. Also, adoHFSD-fed males showed enhanced c-Fos expression in the dorsal HPC, particularly in the dentate gyrus, and in the basolateral amygdala compared with the other groups. Finally, chemogenetic inactivation of the dorsal HPC rescued adoHFSD-induced memory deficits in males. Our results suggest that males are more vulnerable to the effects of adoHFSD on HPC-dependent aversive memory than females, due to overactivation of the dorsal HPC.