Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA.
Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2012 Mar;101(1):24-34. doi: 10.1016/j.pbb.2011.11.009. Epub 2011 Nov 18.
Intermittent swim stress (ISS) exposes a rat to cold water and the effects of the procedure produce detrimental results on activity measures 24h later. The ISS model can be used with the Morris water maze (MWM) to investigate the impact of stress on a spatial learning and memory task, known to involve the hippocampus. We investigated if the ISS model produced performance deficits in the MWM (experiments 1 and 2). We also investigated the role of norepinephrine by using an alpha-2 adrenergic agonist (i.e., clonidine) to exacerbate ISS-induced deficits (experiment 3), and using antidepressants (i.e., desipramine and reboxetine) that enhance the synaptic availability of norepinephrine to reduce ISS-induced deficits (experiments 4 and 5). Results indicated a main effect for stress in all experiments, with the exception of experiment 2, as ISS did induce performance deficits in the MWM. Clonidine enhanced ISS-induced deficits only in the learning trials, while desipramine and reboxetine reduced ISS-induced deficits in the learning trials. Additionally, only reboxetine reduced memory deficits in the MWM. These findings provide evidence that norepinephrine may act as a partial mediator of ISS-induced deficits in MWM performance.
间歇性游泳应激（ISS）使大鼠暴露于冷水中，该过程会在 24 小时后对活动测量产生有害影响。ISS 模型可与 Morris 水迷宫（MWM）一起使用，以研究应激对空间学习和记忆任务的影响，已知该任务涉及海马体。我们研究了 ISS 模型是否会在 MWM 中产生表现缺陷（实验 1 和 2）。我们还通过使用α-2 肾上腺素能激动剂（即可乐定）来加剧 ISS 诱导的缺陷（实验 3），以及使用增强去甲肾上腺素突触可利用性的抗抑郁药（即地昔帕明和瑞波西汀）来研究去甲肾上腺素的作用，以减少 ISS 诱导的缺陷（实验 4 和 5）。结果表明，除实验 2 外，所有实验均存在应激的主要影响，因为 ISS 确实会导致 MWM 中的表现缺陷。可乐定仅在学习试验中增强了 ISS 诱导的缺陷，而地昔帕明和瑞波西汀则减少了学习试验中的 ISS 诱导的缺陷。此外，只有瑞波西汀减少了 MWM 中的记忆缺陷。这些发现提供了证据，表明去甲肾上腺素可能是 MWM 中 ISS 诱导的缺陷的部分介导物。
