Figure 3

Summary of the transgenerational transmission and modification of behavioral deficits induced by prenatal immune activation. The use of a mouse model of viral-like immune activation, which was induced by maternal treatment with the viral mimetic poly(I:C), led to the recent discovery of transgenerational effects following prenatal immune activation (for details, see Weber-Stadlbauer et al.⁹²). In this model, reduced sociability and increased fear-related behavior were similarly present in first-generation (F1) and second-generation (F2) offspring of immune-challenged ancestors. Sensorimotor gating impairments were confined to the direct descendants of infected mothers, whereas increased behavioral despair emerged as a novel phenotype in the second generation. The transgenerational effects were transmitted via the paternal lineage (not shown) and were stable until the third generation (F3), demonstrating transgenerational non-genetic inheritance of pathological traits following prenatal immune activation.