Introduction: In the recent years, the use of several drugs such as cocaine and morphine has reduced, but the use of "club drugs" has increased in many countries. 3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) which has known as ‘ecstasy’ among people has many harmful effects on serotonergic system in the brain. This system is responsible for learning and memory. In this study, we tested sub-acute a...

We investigated the ability of honeybees to learn mazes of four types: constant-turn mazes, in which the appropriate turn is always in the same direction in each decision chamber; zig-zag mazes, in which the appropriate turn is alternately left and right in successive decision chambers; irregular mazes, in which there is no readily apparent pattern to the turns; and variable irregular mazes, in...

Running increases neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, a brain structure that is important for memory function. Consequently, spatial learning and long-term potentiation (LTP) were tested in groups of mice housed either with a running wheel (runners) or under standard conditions (controls). Mice were injected with bromodeoxyuridine to label dividing cells and trained in the Mor...

This study compared 19 older adults and 20 younger adults on the Groton Maze Learning Test((c)) (GMLT), a novel computerized hidden maze learning test that assesses processing speed, spatial learning efficiency, and error monitoring. Convergent validity of this test was assessed by comparing GMLT scores to Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) and Tower of Toronto (TOT) scores. In the ful...

It has been proposed that there are paradoxical sleep windows (PSW) during which REM sleep is required for effective learning. Thus, rats deprived of REM sleep during 0-4 (but not 5-8) h after training show impaired learning of a radial maze task. As cholinergic (ACh) systems are active during REM sleep and may be involved in learning, this experiment investigated the effects on learning of pha...

The striatum and hippocampus are conventionally viewed as complementary learning and memory systems, with the hippocampus specialized for fact-based episodic memory and the striatum for procedural learning and memory. Here we directly tested whether these two systems exhibit independent or coordinated activity patterns during procedural learning. We trained rats on a conditional T-maze task req...

Learning by imitation is a form of learning, which despite the fact it has been widely studied by ethologists, has not been fully understood yet. In fact, there is a considerable disagreement even on the terminology used despite attempts to clarify it (Davis,1973; Galef, 1988;). We believe that by building robots which instantiate the mechanisms hypothesised to underlie these types of behaviour...

Lesions of the amygdala impair performance on a conditioned place preference (CPP) but not a spatial radial maze task. The role of cholinergic receptors within the amygdala in performance of these tasks was evaluated using intra-amygdala injections of the muscarinic receptor antagonist, scopolamine. Food deprived rats were trained on a CPP task, which consisted of four training trials on two ar...

Introduction: The role of ovarian hormones and nitric oxide (NO) in learning and memory and their interaction has been widely investigated. The present study carried out to evaluate different effect of L-NAME on spatial learning and memory of ovariectomized (OVX) and sham operated rats. Methods: 32 rats were divided into 4 groups: 1) Sham 2) OVX 3) Sham-LN and 4) OVX-LN. The animals of groups 3...

PURPOSE Seizures in the developing brain cause less macroscopic structural damage than do seizures in adulthood, but accumulating evidence shows that seizures early in life can be associated with persistent behavioral and cognitive impairments. We previously showed that long-term spatial memory in the eight-arm radial-arm maze was impaired in rats that experienced a single episode of kainic aci...