Journal
NEUROBIOLOGY OF LEARNING AND MEMORY
Volume 95, Issue 4, Pages 491-497Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2011.02.012
Keywords
Eight-arm radial maze; Genetic vulnerability; Hippocampus; Morphology; Spatial learning and memory; Plasticity; Spine density
Funding
- Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion [SAF2008-02902]
- Fundacion Universitaria San Pablo-CEU
- Plan Nacional sobre Drogas 2008-2010
- Plan de Promocion de la Investigacion de la UNED
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Lewis and Fischer-344 rats have been proposed as an addiction model because of their differences in addiction behaviour. It has been suggested that drug addiction is related to learning and memory processes and depends on individual genetic background. We have evaluated learning performance using the eight-arm radial maze (RAM) in Lewis and Fischer-344 adult rats undergoing a chronic treatment with cocaine. In order to study whether morphological alterations were involved in the possible changes in learning after chronic cocaine treatment, we counted the spine density in hippocampal CA1 neurons from animals after the RAM protocol. Our results showed that Fischer-344 rats significantly took more time to carry out test acquisition and made a greater number of errors than Lewis animals. Nevertheless, cocaine treatment did not induce changes in learning and memory processes in both strains of rats. These facts indicate that there are genetic differences in spatial learning and memory that are not modified by the chronic treatment with cocaine. Moreover, hippocampal spine density is cocaine-modulated in both strains of rats. In conclusion, cocaine induces similar changes in hippocampal neurons morphology that are not related to genetic differences in spatial learning in the RAM protocol used here. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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