In this number of Clinics we highlight an intriguing study by Narayanan et al., triggered by the tremendous expansion of the use of cellular phones. They exposed Wistar rats to frequent bursts of the vibratory stimulation (no ring tone) produced by cellular phones and found that such stimulus induces a deficit of spatial memory performance using the Morris water maze test. Both groups did exhib...

Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) is characterized by explicit amnesia, but relatively spared implicit memory. The aim of this study was to assess to what extent KS patients can acquire spatial information while performing a spatial navigation task. Furthermore, we examined whether residual spatial acquisition in KS was based on automatic or effortful coding processes. Therefore, 20 KS patients and 20 ...

Few studies have focused on the role of the vestibular system for navigation and spatial memory functions in humans, with controversial results. Since most experimental settings were based on magnetic resonance imaging volumetry of the hippocampus and virtual navigation task on a PC, aim of this study was to investigate whether a well-compensated unilateral peripheral vestibular hypofunction in...

Tasks that measure spatial learning and navigation have become central to contemporary research programs concerned with identifying the neurobiological bases of learning and memory. Although the past three decades have seen an explosion of research reports on rodent navigation, only a small proportion of this research has been directly aimed at identifying the constituent psychological and beha...

introduction: there are evidences showing the role of nitric oxide in the opiate reward properties. the role of nitric oxide signaling pathway as an intracellular mechanism on augmentation of long term potentiation in hippocampal ca1 area of rats is also confirmed. it has been also reported that oral morphine dependence facilitates formation of spatial learning and memory via activation of nmda...