title: Intracerebroventricular administration of taurine impairs learning and memory in rats.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Taurine is a semi-essential amino acid widely distributed in the body and we take in it from a wide range of nutritive-tonic drinks to improve health. To date, we have elucidated that oral supplementation of taurine does not affect learning and memory in the rat.  However, there are few studies concerning the direct effects of taurine in the brain at the behavior level. In this study, we intracerebroventricularly administered taurine to rats and aimed to elucidate the acute effects on learning and memory using the Morris water maze method.
  
  
  METHODS
  Escape latency, swim distance, and distance to zone, which is the integral of the distance between the rats and the platform for every 0.16 seconds, were adopted as parameters of the ability of learning and memory. We also tried to evaluate the effect of intraperitoneal  taurine administration.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Escape latency, swim distance, and distance to zone were significantly longer in the intracerebroventricularly taurine-administered rats than in the saline-administered rats. Mean swimming velocity was comparable between these two groups,  although the physical performance was improved by taurine administration. Probe trials showed that the manner of the rats in finding the platform was comparable. In contrast, no significant differences were found between the intraperitoneally taurine-administered rats and the saline-administered  rats.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results indicate that taurine administered directly into the brain ventricle suppresses and delays the ability of learning and memory in rats. In contrast, it is implied that taurine administered peripherally was not involved in learning and memory.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan.
authors.forename: Koichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ito
authors.forename: Matevž
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Arko
authors.forename: Tomohiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kawaguchi
authors.forename: Takefumi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kikusui
authors.forename: Masayoshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kuwahara
authors.forename: Hirokazu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tsubone
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D057967:Infusions, Intraventricular; D007274:Injections, Intraperitoneal / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000187:drug effects*; D008568:Memory / Q000187:drug effects*; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D013654:Taurine / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000009:adverse effects*
chemical_list: D013654:Taurine