Glucose attenuation of memory impairments

The performance of pigeons in a short-term memory procedure (delayed matching-to-sample) was studied over a range of retention intervals from 0.2 s to 24.0 s. The authors examined the ability of 3 dose levels of glucose (0, 50, and 100 mg/kg) to alleviate memory impairments produced by administration of scopolamine (0.03 mg/kg), by a reduction in the sample-response requirement and by interpolating retroactive interference in the retention interval (houselight illumination). Glucose administration attenuated the deficit produced by scopolamine and by the reduced sample-response requirement, by reversing the decrement in accuracy at 0 delay. Glucose did not, however, reverse the increase in rate of forgetting generated by retroactive interference. The results suggest that the mode of action by which glucose is able to attenuate drug-induced and behavioral impairments in memory may be through an effect on attentional or encoding processes.