Interactions between medial prefrontal cortex and dorsomedial striatum are necessary for odor span capacity in rats: role of GluN2B-containing NMDA receptors.

Working memory is involved in the maintenance and manipulation of information essential for complex cognition. While the neural substrates underlying working memory capacity have been studied in humans, considerably less is known about the circuitry mediating working memory capacity in rodents. Therefore, the present experiments tested the involvement of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and dorsal striatum (STR) in the odor span task (OST), a task proposed to assay working memory capacity in rodents.

MK-801-induced impairments on the trial-unique, delayed nonmatching-to-location task in rats: effects of acute sodium nitroprusside.

Rationale: The cognitive symptoms observed in schizophrenia are not consistently alleviated by conventional antipsychotics. Following a recent pilot study, sodium nitroprusside (SNP) has been identified as a promising adjunct treatment to reduce the working memory impairments experienced by schizophrenia patients.

Objective: The present experiments were designed to explore the effects of SNP on the highly translatable trial-unique, delayed nonmatching-to-location (TUNL) task in rats with and without acute MK-801 treatment.