Nerve growth factor (NGF) in rat brain following long-term barbital treatment: relation to convulsions and cognitive...

Nerve growth factor (NGF) protein has been implicated in alterations of cognitive function either following brain damage, selective lesions or aging. Groups of rats were given long-term (48 weeks) oral barbital treatment or tap water and following an extended period of abstinence (14 weeks) were tested for spatial learning ability in the Morris swim maze. Following the maze test, they were sacrificed and the NGF content of hippocampal and cortical brain regions were analyzed. Barbital treated rats were divided into convulsing and non-convulsing groups. It was found that there was a slight, significant increase (12%) in NGF content of the hippocampus in convulsing rats. Correlations between maze learning performance, brain weight and NGF in the cortex indicated a significant negative relationship between (a) performance and brain weight on day 1 of testing and (b) NGF content and performance on day 2. These data indicate some involvement of NGF in functions derived from a considerably different animal model to those applied previously.