Scopolamine disrupts maintenance of attention rather than memory processes

Cheal, MaryLou

doi:10.1016/s0163-1047(81)91612-5

Cited by 101 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…These findings parallel the scopolamineinduced errors of omission reported here, since a target stimulus always appeared in the same spatial location (either left or right side) for each subject throughout training and testing. In addition to the reports using human subjects, a disruption in maintenance of attention has also been hypothesized to account for scopolamineinduced changes of exploratory behavior (Cheal 1981), disruptions in place and cue learning (Okaichi and Jarrard 1982), and disruptions in stimulus selection capabilities (Softie et al 1986) in rats. Thus, the increase in discrimination errors reported here following scopolamine treatment may have been due to a disruption in short-term memory, or attentional processing or both.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scopolamine attenuates the motor disruptions but not the attentional disturbances induced by haloperidol in a sustained attention task in the rat

Skjoldager

Fowler

1991

Psychopharmacology

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Rats were trained to perform a sustained attention task that required the subject to insert its head into a cylindrical "observation tunnel" and wait for the presentation of one of three spatially separated visual stimuli located on the upper portion of the tunnel circumference. Detection of a briefly (0.125 s) presented "correct" stimulus, followed by the rats' forward nose poke, resulted in access to a reinforcement dipper lifted through the orifice in the floor of the tunnel. Nose pokes to the two incorrect stimuli resulted in a 5-s time-out period. The task maximized attention and minimized movement requirements. Performance was characterized in terms of accuracy (i.e. errors of omission, and errors of commission), time on task, and latency to respond to the stimuli (i.e., reaction time). Haloperidol (0.04, 0.08, and 0.16 mg/kg) increased errors of omission and reaction time. However, lack of significant correlations between these two measures suggested that attentional accuracy may be independent of motor slowing produced by this neuroleptic. Scopolamine (0.2 mg/kg) alone increased both errors of omission and commission, but did not affect reaction time to correct stimuli. The sustained attention task as implemented here may be useful in the simultaneous study of classical neuroleptics desirable and undesirable CNS effects.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scopolamine attenuates the motor disruptions but not the attentional disturbances induced by haloperidol in a sustained attention task in the rat

Skjoldager

Fowler

1991

Psychopharmacology

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“…an increase in environmental interaction versus a decrease of agonistic interaction and social grooming, could be explained by a failure to maintain attention on a particular stimulus. A scopolamine-induced attention deficit was also postulated to explain memory deficits as well as the inability to learn a complex task (Cheal 1981;Soffi6 et al 1986). Another explanation could be a possible interaction between scopolamine and olfaction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-related scopolamine effects on social and individual behaviour in rats

Soffié

Bronchart

1988

Psychopharmacology

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The modulation of spontaneous (social and individual) behaviour as a function of the age of the rat (1, 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months) and of scopolamine dose (0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.5 mg/kg) was studied. Observations were conducted during the dark phase of the reverse light/dark schedule using a reintroduction procedure. Results showed a marked effect of scopolamine on most of the behavioural patterns considered. Environmental interaction was enhanced whilst agonistic and social active interactions (social grooming) and play fighting were reduced by the drug. A slight hyposensitivity in the youngest rats and a marked hyposensitivity to the drug in the oldest ones were observed. The relationship to biochemical data and human sensitivity on the one hand and to learning and memory tasks and cholinergic specificity on the other hand, are discussed.

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“…The majority of studies using scopolamine show impaired encoding of new memory in humans, primates, and rodents (for review see Hasselmo et al, 1996). However, other studies using scopolamine suggest that the drug disrupts attentional processes rather than memory (Cheal, 1981).…”

Section: Short-term Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

A structural basis for memory storage in mammals

Woolf

1998

Progress in Neurobiology

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AbstractÐIt is proposed that altered dendrite length and de novo formation of new dendrite branches in cholinoceptive cells are responsible for long-term memory storage, a process enabled by the degradation of microtubule-associated protein-2. These memories are encoded as modality-speci®c associable representations. Accordingly, associable representations are con®ned to cytoarchitectonic modules of the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala. The proposed sequence of events leading to long-term storage in cholinoceptive dendrites begins with changes in neuronal activity, then in neurotrophin release, followed by enhanced acetylcholine release, muscarinic response, calcium in¯ux, degradation of microtubule-associated protein-2, and ®nally new dendrite structure. Hypothetically, each associable representation consists of altered dendrite segments from approximately 5000±15 000 cholinoceptive cells contained within one or a few module(s). Simultaneous restructuring during consolidation of long-term memory is hypothesized to result in a similar infrastructure among dendrite sets, facilitating co-activation of those dendrite sets by neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine, and conceivably enabling high energy interactions between those dendrites by phenomena such as quantum optical coherence. Based on the speci®c architecture proposed, it is estimated that the human telencephalon contains enough dendrites to encode 50 million associable representations in a lifetime, or put another way, to encode one new associable representation each minute. The implications that this proposal has regarding treatments for Alzheimer's disease are also discussed. #

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Scopolamine disrupts maintenance of attention rather than memory processes

Cited by 101 publications

References 54 publications

Scopolamine attenuates the motor disruptions but not the attentional disturbances induced by haloperidol in a sustained attention task in the rat

Scopolamine attenuates the motor disruptions but not the attentional disturbances induced by haloperidol in a sustained attention task in the rat

Age-related scopolamine effects on social and individual behaviour in rats

A structural basis for memory storage in mammals

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