THE EFFECT OF ELECTROCONVULSIVE SHOCK AND NIFEDIPINE ON SPATIAL-LEARNING AND MEMORY IN RATS

Several traumatic events including brain contusion, electroconvulsive shock therapy, epileptic seizures and others, may cause short-term ret rograde amnesia. In spite of much recent attention, pharmacological tr eatment of memory impairment has not been fully successful. In the pre sent paper we report on the possible antiamnesic action of the L-type calcium channel blocker, nifedipine. Rats trained in the spatial memor y task showed gradual improvement in the escape latency to find the su bmerged platform. After completion of the learning, they also showed a strong spatial bias toward the place that previously contained the ta rget platform. Prolonged post-trial electroconvulsive shock induced me mory impairment. The calcium channel blocker, previously reported as a ''cognitive enhancer'' given either before or after the learning tria l revealed no antiamnesic effect Nifedipine also does not exert any ac tion when given alone. These results suggest that the drug may not hav e antiamnesic action on human memory disturbed by electroconvulsive th erapy.