Memantıne improves learning in kindled rats

Abstract

Hippocampal kindling which have been used to investigate temporal lobe epilepsy can also be used to show the relation between hippocampus and learning procedures. In this study we aimed to investigate the effects of memantine, a non-selective NMDA receptor antagonist, by using water maze parameters in kindled rats. Adult male Wistar rats were used in 5 experimental groups (n=8); Control group (C); Sham group (had a hippocampal electrode but have no kindling stimulus) (S); Memantine treated group (M); Memantine treated group with kindling stimulus (MKI) and Kindling stimulated group (KI). After memantine treatments and kindling protocols, an acquisition period of 12 day water maze protocol was done in which all groups performances show a decline of escape latency (EL) and path length (PL) which indicates that they were able to learn the platform location in a spatial way. EL performance of M, KI, MKI groups were better than the C group, also the PL performance of M, KI, MKI groups were better than the C group. After day 9 the difference between the groups were disappeared. 13th choice day performance which indicates spatial memory of C, M, MKI groups were not statistically different from each other but for the KI group 13th day EL and PL performances were worse than the others. Our findings indicates that modifying the neuronal plasticity in kindled rats produced a profound decrease in learning and memory. Memantine improves the changing parameters of WM learning model in kindling.