Pfiesteria piscicida Steidinger & Burkholder, an estuarine dinoflagellate known to kill fish, has also been associated with neurocognitive deficits in humans. We have developed a rat model to determine the cause-and-effect relationship between exposure to Pfiesteria-containing water and cognitive impairment and to determine the neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying the Pfiesteria effect. The ra...

The present study tested the effects of electrolytic lesions in two mPFC subregions, the dorsal anterior cingulate area (dACA) and prelimbic cortex, as well as the effects of a larger medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) lesion which included both subregions, on 4-arm baited, 4-arm unbaited, 8-arm radial maze task and its reversal (Experiments 1 and 4), two-way active avoidance (Experiments 2 and 5)...

BACKGROUND Effects of orally administered daytime melatonin on novelty induced behaviors and spatial working memory in mice were evaluated using the open field, the Y maze and the radial arm maze. PURPOSE To ascertain the possible nootropic and/or central excitatory or inhibitory effects of daytime oral melatonin in mice. METHODS Adult male mice from our colony, assigned to three and four g...

BACKGROUND Preclinical evidence suggests that commonly used anesthetic agents induce long-lasting neurobehavioral changes when administered early in life, but there has been virtually no attention to the neurodevelopmental consequences for the fetus of maternal anesthesia. This study tested the hypothesis that fetal rats exposed to isoflurane during maternal anesthesia on gestational day 14, wh...

The present experiment was designed t investigate the role of posterior neocortex (areas 17, 18 and 18a) in the maintenance of performance on the radial maze. Following training to criterion on the 8-arm radial maze, rats received either sham operations, bilateral eye enucleations, lesions of posterior neocortex, or combined enucleations and lesions of posterior neocortex. While the enucleated ...