Repeated neonatal phencyclidine treatment impairs performance of a spatial task in juvenile rats.
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 receive 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.
Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, USA. sircar@aecom.yu.edu
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D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn / Q000502:physiology*; D018691:Excitatory Amino Acid Antagonists / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005260:Female; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000187:drug effects; D010622:Phencyclidine / Q000494:pharmacology*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012153:Retention, Psychology / Q000187:drug effects; D013028:Space Perception / Q000187:drug effects*
D018691:Excitatory Amino Acid Antagonists; D010622:Phencyclidine