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Journal of Neuroscience, Vol 11, 1889-1906, Copyright © 1991 by Society for Neuroscience
NGF improves spatial memory in aged rodents as a function of age
W Fischer, A Bjorklund, K Chen and FH Gage
Department of Medical Cell Research, University of Lund, Sweden.
Aged rats were tested for place navigation in a circular water maze for
spatial memory ability at 18 and 30 months of age; 45% of the 18-month- old
rats displayed impaired place navigation performance relative to young
control rats, while essentially all of the 30-month-old rats were impaired.
The aged impaired rats were retested twice during NGF or vehicle infusion
in the right lateral ventricle. In the 18-month-old group, NGF-infused rats
showed improved retention of previously acquired place navigation
performance and improved spatial acuity over the former platform site when
the invisible platform was removed. NGF infusion also had a significant
effect in the much more severely impaired 30-month-old rats: while the
vehicle-infused aged rats showed a progressive decline in the performance
between the first and second test weeks, the performance of the NGF-infused
rats remained stable throughout the infusion period. The interpretation of
these effects in the oldest animals, however, was confounded by a
progressive decline in swim speed seen in the vehicle-infused animals. The
30-month-old vehicle-infused control rats showed a significant cell loss
and cell shrinkage relative to the young control rats in the
septal/diagonal band area, the striatum, and the nucleus basalis as
assessed by NGF- receptor (NGFr) and ChAT double-label immunocytochemistry.
A significant increase in the size but not in the number of cells was
observed on the side of the NGF infusion in the 30-month-old NGF- infused
rats.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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