title: Disruption of two-way active avoidance behavior produced by nimodipine.
abstract: Nimodipine, a voltage-sensitive calcium channel blocker, has been suggested to be a procognitive drug. In the studies reported herein, we found that low doses of IP-injected nimodipine (0.5 and 0.05 mg/kg) impaired two-way active avoidance behavior. The acquisition phase of the training was the same for drug-treated and control animals. However, the nimodipine-injected rats achieved a significantly lower level of performance. The no-shock tests revealed much faster extinction of the learned behavior in drug-treated vs. control animals. These results could be interpreted as indicating learning-disruptive effects of nimodipine.
authors.affiliation: Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Nikolaev
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kaczmarek
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000187:drug effects*; D003864:Depression, Chemical; D004597:Electroshock; D009553:Nimodipine / Q000494:pharmacology*; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar
chemical_list: D009553:Nimodipine