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Effects of Methylphenidate and Environmental Enrichment on Spatial Memory in Rats

2010
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Article Description

The use of pharmacological cognitive enhancement is prevalent in today's society, but little is known about the relative and combined effects of pharmacological cognitive enhancement and non-pharmacological interventions that also have cognition-promoting effects. One such non-pharmacological intervention is environmental enrichment (EE), an experimental paradigm in animal research referring to more complex housing and sensorimotor stimulation compared to standard laboratory conditions. The goal of this study was to compare the effects of EE and methylphenidate (MPH, Ritalin), a stimulant drug commonly used as a cognitive enhancer by the healthy, on radial arm maze performance in rats. Spatial memory performance was compared in four groups of animals: rats given daily EE, rats given low-dose oral MPH (2.0 mg/kg), rats given both EE and MPH, and rats given neither (controls). Results did not lend strong support to the hypothesis of improved performance in all treatment groups compared to controls, nor did results support the hypothesis that rats given both EE and MPH would exhibit more enhanced performance compared to those receiving only one treatment. Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that similar studies with some methodological modifications may lend more conclusive support to these hypotheses.

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