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Pretest administration of glucose attenuates infantile amnesia for passive avoidance conditioning in rats
Author(s) -
Flint Robert W.,
Riccio David C.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1098-2302(199711)31:3<207::aid-dev5>3.0.co;2-w
Subject(s) - amnesia , psychology , saline , conditioning , retrograde amnesia , context (archaeology) , developmental psychology , subcutaneous injection , endocrinology , medicine , psychiatry , paleontology , statistics , mathematics , biology
Infantile amnesia in rats may be attenuated by a wide variety of retrieval cues which reactivate memory for the training episode. The present study investigated the effects of glucose on memory retrieval in infant rats. In Experiment 1, 17‐day‐old preweanling rats were trained to criterion on passive avoidance conditioning. Twenty‐four hours later, each subject received a subcutaneous injection of either saline, 100 mg/kg, or 250 mg/kg of glucose just prior to testing. Saline animals displayed poor retention scores, suggesting infantile amnesia; however, glucose significantly attenuated the 24‐hr retention loss. Experiment 2 attempted to replicate the previous experiment, control for age and general drug effects, and extend the dose of glucose to 400 mg/kg. The results of Experiment 2 were consistent with Experiment 1 and also indicated that infant subjects performed significantly worse than adults. Both 100 and 250 mg/kg of glucose significantly attenuated infantile amnesia; however, 400 mg/kg had no effect. These results support a retrieval failure view of infantile amnesia and extend the memory‐influencing properties of glucose to infants. Context and neuroendocrine views of memory retrieval are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 31: 207–216, 1997