We investigated the effects of beta-estradiol on the locomotor behavior of female mice in a radial maze. Data comprising the total distance traveled during each arm entry were obtained from video records of six consecutive daily recording sessions. Distributions of these data were bimodal for both ovariectomized control and beta-estradiol-treated ovariectomized subjects. Data were fit with the ...

farct dementia accompanying the increase in aging populations has become a social problem, the development of effective drugs for treating these conditions is vital. Among the traditional Chinese natural medicines, Polygala root (Japanese name: onji)—the root of Polygala tenuifolia WILLDENOW (family Polygalaceae)—may improve memory, since some Chinese prescriptions containing Polygala root have...

BACKGROUND Adolescence is not only a critical period of late-stage neurological development in humans, but is also a period in which ethanol consumption is often at its highest. Given the prevalence of ethanol use during this vulnerable developmental period we assessed the long-term effects of chronic intermittent ethanol (CIE) exposure during adolescence, compared to adulthood, on performance ...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The monoaminergic systems which exert a modulatory role in memory processing, are disturbed in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Moringa oleifera (MO) has been shown to exert its effect in CNS by altering the brain monoamines. The present study aims to see whether chronic oral treatment of ethanolic extract of MO leaves can alter the brain monoamines (norepinephrine, dopamine...

The lateral mammillary nuclei are a central structure within the head direction system yet there is still relatively little known about how these nuclei contribute to spatial performance. In the present study, rats with selective neurotoxic lesions of the lateral mammillary nuclei were tested on a working memory task in a radial-arm maze. This task requires animals to distinguish between eight ...

The present experiments were designed to examine the hypothesis that the mammalian brain contains anatomically distinct memory systems. Rats with bilateral lesions of caudate nucleus or fimbria-fornix and a control group were tested postoperatively on 1 of 2 versions of the radial maze task. In a standard win-shift version, each of the 8 arms of the maze was baited once, and the number of error...

Mammillary bodies and the mammillothalamic tract are parts of a classic neural circuitry that has been implicated in severe memory disturbances accompanying Korsakoff's syndrome. However, the specific role of mammillary bodies in memory functions remains controversial, often being considered as just an extension of the hippocampal memory system. To study this issue we used mutant mice with a ta...

Cognitive impairment is a significant comorbidity of epilepsy. At present, the molecular/cellular mechanisms that underlie these cognitive impairments remain unknown. It seems likely that a complete understanding at the molecular/cellular level will require the use of rodent models. A number of rodent models of epilepsy are used to study cognition in a variety of behavioral tasks. This review p...