Early life stress (ES) significantly increases predisposition to psychopathologies. Cannabinoids may cause cognitive deficits and exacerbate the effects of ES. Nevertheless, the endocannabinoid system has been suggested as a therapeutic target for the treatment of stress- and anxiety-related disorders. Here we examined whether cannabinoids…

Normal aging can result in a decline of memory and muscle function. Exercise may prevent or delay these changes. However, aging-associated frailty can preclude physical activity. In young sedentary animals, pharmacological activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), a transcriptional regulator important for muscle physiology, enhanced…

Glucocorticoid administration has been shown to exert complex effects on cognitive and emotional processing. In the current study we investigated the effects of glucocorticoid administration on attention towards emotional words, using an Affective Go/No-go task on which healthy humans have shown an attentional bias towards positive as compared to…

Physical activity improves learning and hippocampal neurogenesis. It is unknown whether compounds that increase endurance in muscle also enhance cognition. We investigated the effects of endurance factors, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor [delta] agonist GW501516 and AICAR, activator of AMP-activated protein kinase on memory and…

One of the most common and serious co-morbidities in patients with epilepsy is cognitive impairment. While early-life seizures are considered a major cause for cognitive impairment, it is not known whether it is the seizures, the underlying neurological substrate or a combination that has the largest impact on eventual learning and memory. Teasing…

Pattern completion is the ability to retrieve complete information on the basis of incomplete retrieval cues. Although it has been demonstrated that this cognitive capacity depends on the NMDA receptors (NMDA-Rs) of the hippocampal CA3 region, the role played by these glutamatergic receptors in the pattern completion process has not yet been…

Because of ongoing neuromaturation, youth with chronic alcohol/substance use disorders (AUD/SUD) are at risk for cognitive decrements during young adulthood. We prospectively examined cognition over 10 years based on AUD/SUD history. Youth (N = 51) with no AUD/SUD history (n = 14), persisting AUD/SUD (n = 18), or remitted AUD/SUD (n = 19) were…

Conventional lesion methods have shown that damage to the rodent hippocampus can impair previously acquired spatial memory in tasks such as the water maze. In contrast, work with reversible lesion methods using a different spatial task has found remote memory to be spared. To determine whether the finding of spared remote spatial memory depends on…

There is now accumulating evidence that the striatal complex in its two major components, the dorsal striatum and the nucleus accumbens, contributes to spatial memory. However, the possibility that different striatal subregions might modulate specific aspects of spatial navigation has not been completely elucidated. Therefore, in this study, two…

Emotionally charged experiences alter memory storage via the activation of hormonal systems. Previously, we have shown that compared with rats trained for a massed spatial learning task in the water maze in warm water (25 degrees C), animals that were trained in cold water (19 degrees C) performed better and showed higher levels of the stress…

The present study examines the potentially harmful effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on later visuospatial memory functions. A novel neuropsychological measure of immediate- and short-term memory for visuospatial information was administered to 40 children, who were identified as cocaine-exposed, and 11 age and socioeconomic status matched…