Neuropharmacology Poster Session
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Herron, AH (Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA)
Fang, P-C (Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA)
Voss, SE (Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA)
Garraghty, PE (Program in Neural Science, Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA)
Abstract
Recent findings have suggested that chronic treatment with antiepileptic medications may produce adverse cognitive effects. We have previously reported learning impairments in rats and rabbits in instrumental and Pavlovian condtioning tasks respectively. In the present study, we have investigated the effects of phenytoin, carbamazepine, valproic acid, and ethosuximide in rats learning a Morris water maze task. We report that phenytoin-treated animals display deficits in learning to navigate to the escape platform across all days of testing. Moreover, in the subset of phenytoin-treated that did acquire the escape response, swim paths were more circuitous than in controls. Treatment with carbamazepine impairs the initial acquisition of the escape response, but terminal performance was indistinguishable from controls. Animals treated with either ethosuximide or valproic acid learned the task at a rate comparable to controls. We suggest that the adverse cognitive effects of phenytoin, in particular, may result from indirect actions on NMDA receptors in the hippocampal formation and/or the prefrontal cortex.
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Poster Number PAchurchill0693
Keywords: hippocampus, learning, memory, drug, Morris
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