Substance P facilitation of memory: effects in an appetitively motivated learning task.
Food deprived, heterogeneous strain (HS/IBG) mice were trained on two different discrimination tasks for food reinforcement. In one experiment animals were trained to make spatial discriminations in a T maze. Immediately after training they were given subcutaneous injections of either substance P (1 ng/g) or vehicle. Twenty-four hours later the animals were given reversal training in the same maze. The results showed that substance P-treated animals took significantly longer to acquire the reversal habit than did control mice. In a second experiment, animals were trained to make visual discriminations in a T maze. Immediately after reaching acquisition criterion animals were injected with either substance P (1 ng/g) or vehicle. Different groups of mice were retrained on the same task either 1, 2, 3, or 7 days after original learning. Savings scores were calculated and, at every interval, substance P-treated mice retained the task better than control animals. One interpretation of these data is that substance P-treated mice remembered the original task significantly better than vehicle-injected control animals.
Schlesinger
K
K
Pelleymounter
M A
MA
van de Kamp
J
J
Bader
D L
DL
Stewart
J M
JM
Chase
T N
TN
D000324:Adrenocorticotropic Hormone / Q000494:pharmacology; D000818:Animals; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000187:drug effects; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000187:drug effects*; D051379:Mice; D010446:Peptide Fragments / Q000494:pharmacology; D012193:Reversal Learning / Q000187:drug effects; D013373:Substance P / Q000494:pharmacology*
D010446:Peptide Fragments; D013373:Substance P; D000324:Adrenocorticotropic Hormone; C011394:ACTH (4-10)