Jang Choon-Gon, Lee Seok-Yong, Yoo Ji-Hoon, Yan Ji-Jing, Song Dong-Keun, Loh Horace H, Ho Ing K
Department of Pharmacology, College of Pharmacy, Sungkyunkwan University, 300 Cheoncheon-dong, Jangan-gu, Gyoungi-do, Suwon 440-746, South Korea.
Brain Res Mol Brain Res. 2003 Sep 10;117(1):68-72. doi: 10.1016/s0169-328x(03)00291-2.
Previous study has demonstrated that the lack of mu-opioid receptor decreased LTP in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, suggesting the possibility that the lack of mu-opioid receptor may accompany a change in learning and memory. However, no behavioral study has been undertaken to correlate LTP deficits with spatial memory impairment in mu-opioid receptor knockout mice. Therefore, the present study investigated the hypothesis that mu-opioid receptors contribute to learning and memory by using the Morris water maze, and comparing responses in wild type and mu-opioid receptor gene knockout mice. Our results indicated that mu-opioid receptor knockout mice showed a significant spatial memory impairment compared to wild type in the Morris water maze. This result suggests that the expression of mu-opioid receptor plays an important role in spatial learning and memory examined by Morris water maze.
先前的研究表明，μ-阿片受体的缺失会降低海马齿状回的长时程增强（LTP），这表明μ-阿片受体的缺失可能伴随着学习和记忆的改变。然而，尚未进行行为学研究来关联μ-阿片受体基因敲除小鼠的LTP缺陷与空间记忆损伤。因此，本研究通过使用莫里斯水迷宫，并比较野生型和μ-阿片受体基因敲除小鼠的反应，来探究μ-阿片受体对学习和记忆有贡献这一假说。我们的结果表明，在莫里斯水迷宫中，与野生型相比，μ-阿片受体基因敲除小鼠表现出显著的空间记忆损伤。这一结果表明，μ-阿片受体的表达在通过莫里斯水迷宫检测的空间学习和记忆中起着重要作用。
