title: Memantine facilitates memory consolidation and reconsolidation in the day-old chick.
abstract: Memantine is a non-competitive N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist that has been approved for the treatment of the cognitive deficits noted in Alzheimer's disease. While there is a body of research that supports memantine's facilitative action upon memory compromise, this series of studies aimed to investigate the effects of this drug in healthy animals with intact memory functioning. A 0.1 mM dose of memantine injected immediately after a weakly aversive training event (i.e. 20% v/v methyl anthranilate) was found to enhance passive avoidance learning for this event in day-old chicks up to 24 h following training. The same dose of memantine was also observed to enhance memory for the training event when it was administered in conjunction with a reminder trial. These results suggest that memantine is capable of facilitating both memory consolidation as well as memory reconsolidation. It was concluded that memantine's mechanism may involve the short-term or intermediate memory phases of the Gibbs and Ng model of memory, and that the current findings represent enhancement of intact memory, rather than amelioration of memory compromise.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Science, Faculty of Science, Technology and Engineering, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3086, Australia. jrsamartgis@students.latrobe.edu.au
authors.forename: Jodi R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Samartgis
authors.forename: Leslie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Schachte
authors.forename: Agnes
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hazi
authors.forename: Simon F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Crowe
mesh_terms: D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000188:drug therapy; D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000187:drug effects*; D002645:Chickens; D018691:Excitatory Amino Acid Antagonists / Q000494:pharmacology* / Q000592:standards; D008559:Memantine / Q000494:pharmacology* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D008568:Memory / Q000187:drug effects*; D016194:Receptors, N-Methyl-D-Aspartate / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors*
chemical_list: D018691:Excitatory Amino Acid Antagonists; D016194:Receptors, N-Methyl-D-Aspartate; D008559:Memantine