Prenatal cocaine exposure does not alter working memory in adult rats

The present study was designed to assess working memory in adult rats exposed to intravenous cocaine in utero, as part of an examination of various cognitive and affective functions. The study included four groups: a saline control and three groups exposed to ascending doses of cocaine from gestational days 8 to 21 (0.5, 1.0, or 3.0 mg/kg). This exposure regimen (route of administration and dose) has been shown to accurately reproduce the pharmacokinetic profile and physiological effects of human recreational cocaine use. This report describes the results of a series of automated alternation tasks, in which the animals were rewarded for alternating their responses between two response ports on successive trials. In the final task, the delay between trials varied randomly between 0, 20, 40, and 80 s, thereby varying the retention interval. Although performance declined dramatically as the retention interval increased, the rate of this decline did not differ across treatment groups. These results suggest that prenatal cocaine exposure, at doses that model recreational use, does not produce lasting changes in explicit memory or working memory. However, subtle, sex-specific effects of prenatal cocaine exposure were seen on measures that indicate impairments in sustained attention and "readiness", as well as altered reactivity to task-related stressors such as waiting for long and unpredictable delays.