Memory performance

Nevertheless NGF from mouse mandibular gland has been infused into the right lateral ventricle of two patients (67 and 57 years) for three months at a rate of 75 pg/h. The younger showed no change in memory performance the older some improvement after one month, which ceased after the infusion was stopped. Both patients had various reversible side-effects such as back pain and weight loss. 

Results showed that both novelty and white noise improved recall performance under placebo and decreased it under caffeine.6 It appears that the additional arousal generated by novelty and white noise served to push caffeine subjects over the top of the inverted-U curve and hence decrease their recall performance. Thus, it may be that caffeine does improve memory performance under conditions that otherwise produce low arousal. However, any condition causing overarousal, whether or not it is a part of the memory task itself, can yield performance decrements. 

Terry, W. and Phifer, B., Caffeine and memory performance on the AVLT. Journal... 

Ginseng extract improves the spatial learning performance of aged rats in an eight-arm radial maze and operant discrimination task (Nitta et al. 1995). It also improves memory performance in active-avoidance (shuttle-box) and passive-avoidance (step-down) tasks, and reinforces staircase-maze learning in both young and aged rats. (Petkov and Mosharrof 1987 Petkov et al. 1990 Petkov et al. 1992). The effects were also very dose dependent, with inverted U-shape dose-response curves. 

Laredo M, FemandezNovoa L, Alvarez X, Cacabelos R, Corzo D, Perea J, Daniele D, Mouzo R. (1997) CiticoUne improves memory performance in elderly subjects. Meth Find Exp Clin Pharmacol 19 201-210. 

The selection of C57BL/6 or DBA/2 strains would therefore depend on whether one expects impairment or amelioration of memory performance after a certain pharmacological treatment. 

It is striking that the behavioural consequences of an impairment of as GABAa receptors are opposite to those of a NMDA receptor deficit. While mice with a deficit in hippocampal NMDA receptors (NRI-CAl knockout) show a deficit in the formation of spatial and temporal memory (Tsien et al. 1996 Tang et al. 1999), the mice with a deficit in as GABAa receptors display an improvement in hippocampal spatial and temporal memory performance. Thus, it appears that these two receptor systems play a complementary role in controlling neuronal processing in the hippocampus. 

ZO202 Nishizaza, K., H. Saito, and N. Nishi-yama. Effects of kamikihi-to, a traditional Chinese medicine, on learning and memory performance in mice. Phytother Res 1991 5(3) 97-102. 

Mao, Z.M., Arnsten, A.RT, Li, B.M. (1999) Local infusion of alpha-1 adrenergic agonist into the prefrontal cortex impairs spatial working memory performance in monkeys. Biol Psychiatry 46 1259-1265. 

Newcomer, J.W, Selke, G., Melson, A.K., Hershey, T., Craft, S., Richards, K., and Alderson, A.L. (1999). Decreased memory performance in healthy humans induced by stress-level cortisol treatment. Arch Gen Psychiatry 56 527-533. 

A few studies involving amphetamine suggested improved learning and memory performance. These effects presumably may be attributed to improved alertness during the acquisition phase (Chapter 7). 

Episodic memory and learning, involving both explicit verbal and visual memory performance in contrast, recognition and implicit memory tasks appear to be spared. 

Proven or alleged lack of negative effects upon cognitive function, especially memory performance, is occasionally used as an argument to support the use... 

Levkovitz. Y., Caftori, R., Avital, A., Richter-Levin. G. The SSRI drug fluoxetine, but not the noradrenergic tricyclic drug desipramine, improves memory performance during acute major depression. Brain Res. Bull. 58, 345-350, 2002. 

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