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Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats
Published on: February 15, 2015
Repeated Neonatal Phencyclidine Treatment Impairs Performance of a Spatial Task in Juvenile Ratsa
1Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, USADepartment of Psychology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
Abstract:
The present study was designed to determine whether repeated postnatal blockade of N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) channel produces cognitive deficit in juvenile rats. Rats received phencyclidine (PCP) intraperitoneally (i.p.) from postnatal Day 5 and continued daily till Day 15. On Day 28, saline- and PCP-treated rats were trained in the Morris water maze task. PCP-treated rats performed as well as the saline-treated rats on the first day of testing, but on the second day of testing they did significantly poorly compared to saline-treated controls. These data suggest that chronic postnatal NMDA channel blockade by PCP impairs processes that enable rats to retain spatial information.
