Pretest administration of glucose attenuates infantile amnesia for passive avoidance conditioning in rats
✍ Scribed by Robert W. Flint Jr.; David C. Riccio
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 202 KB
- Volume
- 31
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0012-1630
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Infantile amnesia in rats may be attenuated by a wide variety of retrieval cues which reactivate memory for the training episode. The present study investigated the effects of glucose on memory retrieval in infant rats. In Experiment 1, 17-day-old preweanling rats were trained to criterion on passive avoidance conditioning. Twenty-four hours later, each subject received a subcutaneous injection of either saline, or of glucose just 100 mg/kg, 250 mg/kg prior to testing. Saline animals displayed poor retention scores, suggesting infantile amnesia; however, glucose significantly attenuated the 24-hr retention loss. Experiment 2 attempted to replicate the previous experiment, control for age and general drug effects, and extend the dose of glucose to
The results of Experiment 2 were consistent with Experiment 1 400 mg/kg. and also indicated that infant subjects performed significantly worse than adults. Both 100 and of glucose significantly attenuated infantile amnesia; however, had no 250 mg/kg 400 mg/kg effect. These results support a retrieval failure view of infantile amnesia and extend the memoryinfluencing properties of glucose to infants. Context and neuroendocrine views of memory retrieval are discussed.