DOSE-DEPENDENT ACTION OF GLUCOSE ON MEMORY PROCESSES IN WOMEN - EFFECT ON SERIAL POSITION AND RECALL PRIORITY

Previous research has shown that glucose can enhance memory in animals and humans. In humans, the facilitative effect of glucose is best obs erved with declarative memory tasks in older subjects. While the memor y-enhancing action of glucose is well established, the underlying phys iological mechanisms and the specific aspects of memory that are modul ated by glucose in humans are not well understood. The present study s ought to examine the effects of glucose on memory in young women using a memory paradigm sensitive to specific encoding and retrieval strate gies. The glucose dose was adjusted for the weight of each participant in order to generate a dose response curve covering most doses used i n previous studies. The results showed that 300 mg/kg glucose enhanced the primacy effect as defined by the recall of the first five items o f the lists. However, none of the doses of glucose produced changes in the recall priority given to primacy items. The effect of glucose app ears to be localized on the recall primacy effect, suggesting that glu cose acts on precise memory operations. This improvement, however, is independent of the order in which subjects recalled the words. Choline rgic drugs have been shown to alter the recall of the primacy part of word lists and this observation is consistent with the hypothesis that glucose acts on memory through an interaction with brain cholinergic systems. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.