Elsevier

Neurobiology of Aging

Volume 13, Issue 3, May–June 1992, Pages 369-373
Neurobiology of Aging

Article
Deterioration of spatial and nonspatial reference and working memory in aged rats: Protective effect of life-long calorie restriction

https://doi.org/10.1016/0197-4580(92)90110-JGet rights and content

Abstract

—Two different aspects of learning (spatial and nonspatial) and two different types of memory (reference and working) were simultaneously measured in populations of 3- (young), 11- (adult), and 25-month-old (aged) rats fed ad libitum either a standard (ST) or a hypocaloric (HY) diet. All groups, regardless of age or diet, showed ability in learning all four versions of the task. However, old ST rats were significantly slower and less efficient at learning than the young and adult ST rats. In contrast, senescent HY rats' cognitive abilities did not differ from those of their young and adult counterparts. The decline in reference and working memory in the aged ST rats was more pronounced in the spatial than the nonspatial version of the task. This study confirms and extends to more specific aspects of memory our earlier finding that age-related cognitive deterioration in rats was antagonized by life-long calorie restriction.

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Cited by (123)

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    2020, Mechanisms of Ageing and Development
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    Cognitive function and underlying cellular, molecular and physiological mechanisms are known to decline with age (Bettio et al., 2017; Clapp and Gazzaley, 2012; Padgaonkar et al., 2017). Long-term ER can reduce the learning and memory impairments in aged rats, compared to young adult rats as examined with the Morris water maze task (Adams et al., 2008; Pitsikas and Algeri, 1992; Rojic-Becker et al., 2019). Aged mice also show similar improvements in memory following long-term ER in several tasks, including the Morris water maze, the novel object recognition task as well as different operant tasks (Fontan-Lozano et al., 2007; Jeon et al., 2016; Ma et al., 2018; Wahl et al., 2018).

  • Age-related memory decline, dysfunction of the hippocampus and therapeutic opportunities

    2020, Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
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    Caloric restriction, a reduction in food consumption without malnutrition, is known to extend lifespan in many organisms (Pifferi and Aujard, 2019; Pistell et al., 2012; Rapp and Gallagher, 1996). Lifelong caloric restriction improves memory in aged rodents (Pitsikas and Algeri, 1992), an effect that might be caused by the improvement of NMDA receptors and LTP (Eckles-Smith et al., 2000a). Diet modulates the epigenome and growing evidence indicates that nutritional changes can modify age-related epigenetic marks (Gensous et al., 2019).

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Present address: Sigma Tau S.p.A., Via Pontina, Km 30,400, 00040, Pomezia Rome, Italy.

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