Summary Aim Although cognitive deficits commonly co‐occur with stress‐related emotional disorders, effect of procognitive drugs such as histaminergic H 3 receptor antagonists are scarcely studied on memory retrieval in stress condition. Methods Experiment 1 . Memory of two successive spatial discriminations (D1 then D2) 24 hours after learning was studied in a four‐hole board in mice. H3 receptor antagonist ciproxifan ( ip 3 mg/kg) and acute stress (three electric footshocks; 0.9 mA; 15 ms) were administered 30 and 15 minutes respectively before memory retrieval test. Fos immunostaining was performed to evaluate the neural activity of several brain areas. Experiment 2 . Effects of ciproxifan and acute stress were evaluated on anxiety‐like behavior in the elevated plus maze and glucocorticoid activity using plasma corticosterone assay. Results Experiment 1 . Ciproxifan increased memory retrieval of D2 in nonstress condition and of D1 in stress one. Ciproxifan mitigated the stress‐induced increase of Fos expression in the prelimbic and infralimbic cortex, the central and basolateral amygdala and the CA1 of dorsal hippocampus. Experiment 2 . Ciproxifan dampened the stress‐induced anxiety‐like behavior and plasma corticosterone increase. Conclusion Ciproxifan improved contextual memory retrieval both in stress and nonstress conditions without exacerbating behavioral and endocrine responses to stress. Overall, these data suggest potential usefulness of H 3 receptor antagonists as cognitive enhancer both in nonstress and stress conditions.

Sleep restriction (SR) impairs short term memory (STM) that might be related to different processes. Neuropeptide S (NPS), an endogenous neuropeptide that improves short term memory, activates arousal and decreases anxiety is likely to counteract the SR-induced impairment of STM. The objective of the present study was to find common cerebral pathways in sleep restriction and NPS action in order to ultimately antagonize SR effect on memory. The STM was assessed using a spontaneous spatial alternation task in a T-maze. C57-Bl/6J male mice were distributed in 4 groups according to treatment (0.1nmol of NPS or vehicle intracerebroventricular injection) and to 20h-SR. Immediately after behavioural testing, regional c-fos immunohistochemistry was performed and used as a neural activation marker for spatial short term memory (prefrontal cortex, dorsal hippocampus) and emotional reactivity (basolateral amygdala and ventral hippocampus). Anxiety-like behaviour was assessed using elevated-plus maze task. Results showed that SR impaired short term memory performance and decreased neuronal activation in cingular cortex.NPS injection overcame SR-induced STM deficits and increased neuronal activation in infralimbic cortex. SR spared anxiety-like behavior in the elevated-plus maze. Neural activation in basolateral nucleus of amygdala and ventral hippocampus were not changed after SR.In conclusion, the present study shows that NPS overcomes SR-induced STM deficits by increasing prefrontal cortex activation independently of anxiety-like behaviour.

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