Active allothetic place avoidance task in study of cognitive disturbance in animal model of schizophrenia in rats

Since the ethiopathology of schizophrenia is not fully understood, it is difficult to establish its animal model with full construct validity. Recently applied models are based on the central blockade of glutamate receptors, namely their NMDA subtype. It has been observed that administration of compounds that block NMDA receptor-dependent neurotransmission (phencyclidine, ketamine, dizocilpine) elicits a psychotic state when applied to healthy humans and worsens the psychotic symptoms when administered to schizophrenic patients [1]. Application of high-affinity noncompetitive NMDA-receptor antagonist MK-801 (dizocilpine) was proposed as an animal model of schizophrenia which proved to have relatively high predictive validity [2]. Animals treated with MK-801 exhibit typical changes in behavior including hyperactivity, stereotypic behaviors, defective habituation, impaired attention, simpler behavioral repertoire and general behavioral primitivization [3].