Drugs of Abuse and Memory Span

项目摘要/摘要：滥用药物与多种认知能力有关 缺陷包括学习和记忆障碍。需要动物模型才能 更好地评估使用和滥用精神活性药物的认知风险以及 在当前赠款期间完成的研究制定了有希望的程序，以 评估药物对大鼠记忆能力的影响。拟议的工作将集中在五个方面 主要药物(CDZ、东莨菪碱、MDMA、DZP和氯胺酮) 关于我们在前期工作中观察到的效果。这些拟议的研究将1)使用 更精确的记忆负荷测量，以测试药物对我们大脑中的 最近完成的研究可能受到注意力因素的影响，因为 使用多个分心器。2)使用允许分析以下内容的列表存储过程 要记住的刺激数量和检验假设的保持间隔 这些药物对再认记忆有不同的作用：即NMDA拮抗剂 效应取决于记忆负荷，而MDMA、CDZ和东莨菪碱的效应是 依赖于延迟。3)使用包括分离响应的测试试验的气味列表任务 基于对特定情节序列的相对熟悉度和记忆力来测试 NMDA拮抗剂同时损害熟悉性和情景样记忆的假说 过程，而CDZ和东莨菪碱不需要熟悉，MDMA两者都不需要 流程。最后，建议的研究将为学生提供一个理想的机会 培养精神药理学和神经科学方面的技能和背景。

Project Summary/Abstract: Drugs of abuse are associated with a variety of cognitive deficits including disruption of learning and memory. Animal models are needed to better assess the cognitive risks of use and abuse of psychoactive drugs and the studies completed during the current grant period developed promising procedures to assess drug effects on memory capacity in rats. The proposed work will focus on five key drugs (CDZ, scopolamine, MDMA, DZP and ketamine) of particular interest based on the effects observed in our preliminary work. These proposed studies will 1) use a more refined measure of memory load to test the hypothesis that drug effects in our recently completed studies might have been influenced by attentional factors due the use of multiple distractors. 2) Use a list memory procedure that permits the analysis of both the number of stimuli to remember and the retention interval to test the hypothesis that these drugs have different actions on recognition memory: i.e., NMDA antagonist effects depend on memory load, whereas MDMA, CDZ, and scopolamine effects are delay-dependent. 3) Use an odor list task that includes test trials separating responding based on relative familiarity versus recollection of specific episode sequences to test the hypothesis that NMDA antagonists impair both familiarity and episodic-like memory processes, whereas CDZ, and scopolamine spare familiarity, and MDMA spares both processes. Finally, the proposed research will provide an ideal opportunity for students to develop skills and background in psychopharmacology and neuroscience.