Methamphetamine exposure from postnatal day 11 to 20 causes impairments in both behavioral strategies and spatial learning in adult rats

Spatial learning and memory deficits in a water maze have been observed in adult animals exposed to a regimen of 4 daily doses of d-methamphetamine (MA) at 2 h intervals from postnatal day 11 to 20. An interpretational issue for these long-term effects of MA is whether they are truly spatial deficits or are secondary to alterations in sensorimotor systems. In this experiment, we evaluated the effects of a pretraining procedure shown to minimize the influence of drug-induced sensorimotor deficit. Animals within a litter were treated with MA or saline. Animals were either pretrained for nonspatial task requirements in the water maze (i.e., swimming and platform climbing) or were naive to the task. Animals that received the pretraining did better than the naive animals. The naive MA animals performed worse than the naive control animals as previously observed, By contrast, no difference in search time was noted between pretrained MA- and SAL-treated animals during the acquisition phase of testing. When the platform was relocated in a novel position, spatial learning was impaired for MA animals, regardless of pretraining. No increase in the number of platform nonrecognition events (swimovers, deflections. or jump-offs) occurred among pretrained or naive groups compared to controls, These data suggest that sensorimotor deficits do not account for the spatial learning and memory deficits in animals exposed neonatally to MA. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.