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Acute progesterone treatment impairs spatial working memory in intact male and female rats
Wei-Lun Sun1, Victoria N Luine, Luyi Zhou
1Department of Psychology, Hunter College of the City University of New York, 10065, USA.
Introduction:
The aim of this study was to determine if progesterone affects spatial and non-spatial working memory in intact male and female rats.
Methods:
Rats received subcutaneous injections of progesterone (500 microg) or vehicle (sesame oil). Four hours after hormone treatments, spatial and non-spatial memories were tested using novel object recognition and spatial object recognition tasks.
Results:
Vehicle-treated female rats had higher progesterone serum levels than males, but progesterone treatment produced equivalent progesterone serum levels in both sexes. In the object recognition task--a non-spatial memory task-females showed better performance than males, and progesterone had no effect on either sex. However, in the object replacement task--a spatial memory task-progesterone significantly impaired the retention in both male and female rats as compared with vehicle-treated groups.
Conclusion:
These results suggest that acute progesterone treatment interferes with spatial working memory consolidation, but not recognition (non-spatial) working memory. As such, the observed sexual incongruities in progesterone's effects on working memory suggest that progesterone-based hormone therapies have a negative impact on cognition.
