Memory in the Japanese quail: effects of puromycin and acetoxycycloheximide

Intracerebral injections of puromycin produced memory deficits in naive quail trained to discriminate between red and green stimuli. Puromycin aminonucleoside, acetoxycycloheximide, and saline had no such effect. After a single reversal of the visual cues, naive quail treated with puromycin performed better than control birds. Also, puromycin had no effect on performance when injected into previously trained animals. High doses both of puromycin and acetoxycycloheximide inhibited ribonucleic acid and protein synthesis to a similar extent, while low doses of puromycin inhibited only protein synthesis. Since only puromycin inhibited memory, the basis for its effect appears more likely to be mediated by the action of peptidyl-puromycin rather than by the quantitative inhibition of macromolecular synthesis or by some nonspecific toxic action.