Introduction: The dorsal striatum plays an important role in the control of motor activity and learning processes within the basal ganglia circuitry. Furthermore, recent works have suggested functional differentiation between subregions of the dorsal striatum Methods: The present study examined the effects of bilateral electrolytic lesions of the dorsomedial striatum on motor behavior and learn...

Pigeons, unlike rats, do not display very accurate spatial working memory when tested in the traditional radial arm maze apparatus unless they are given special and extended training (cf. Roberts & Van Veldhuizen, 1985). One possible reason for their apparent "unpreparedness" to display spatial memory abilities in radial arm mazes is that, in the wild, pigeons tend to feed in open-field environ...

BACKGROUND Albizia adianthifolia (Schumach.) W. Wright (Fabaceae) is a traditional herb largely used in the African traditional medicine as analgesic, purgative, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial and memory-enhancer drug. This study was undertaken in order to evaluate the possible cognitive-enhancing and antioxidative effects of the aqueous extract of A. adianthifolia leaves in the ...

Hypokinesia is a widespread risk factor for the pathogenesis in a variety of organsystems, particularly for disorders of the central nervous system. For the aging population hypokinesia is frequently the main life-style; hypokinesis by the interruption of selfmotion, restriction of spatial and head direction provide a type of cognitive paralysis. We have investigated learning of spatial form ra...

Injury to the anterior thalamic nuclei (ATN) may affect both hippocampus and retrosplenial cortex thus explaining some parallels between diencephalic and medial temporal lobe amnesias. We found that standard-housed rats with ATN lesions, compared with standard-housed controls, showed reduced spine density in hippocampal CA1 neurons (basal dendrites, -11.2%; apical dendrites, -9.6%) and in retro...

How long-term memories are stored is a fundamental question in neuroscience. The first molecular mechanism for long-term memory storage in the brain was recently identified as the persistent action of protein kinase Mzeta (PKMzeta), an autonomously active atypical protein kinase C (PKC) isoform critical for the maintenance of long-term potentiation (LTP). PKMzeta maintains aversively conditione...

How long-term memories are stored is a fundamental question in neuroscience. The first molecular mechanism for long-term memory storage in the brain was recently identified as the persistent action of protein kinase Mzeta (PKMf), an autonomously active atypical protein kinase C (PKC) isoform critical for the maintenance of long-term potentiation (LTP). PKMf maintains aversively conditioned asso...

The septo-hippocampal cholinergic pathway has traditionally been thought of as essential for spatial memory. Recent studies have demonstrated intact spatial learning following removal of this pathway with an immunotoxin selective for cholinergic neurons. In the present experiment, rats with selective removal of hippocampal cholinergic input were tested in a delayed nonmatching-to-position task ...