Histamine acting on the basolateral amygdala reverts the impairment of aversive memory of rats submitted to neonatal maternal deprivation.

Recent findings suggest a role of brain histamine in the regulation of memory consolidation, particularly in one-trial inhibitory avoidance (IA) learning and that disruption in the mother infant relationship i.e. maternal deprivation induces cognitive deficits. We investigate whether histamine itself, and histaminergic compounds given into the basolateral amygdala (BLA) immediately post-training can affect retention (24 h after training) of one-trial (IA) in rats submitted to early postnatal maternal deprivation. In all cases, deprived (Dep) animals had lower retention scores than non-deprived controls (N-dep). Histamine induced memory enhancement on its own in N-dep animals and was able to overcome the deleterious effect of Dep. The effects by SKF-91488 is similar to histamine. The H3 agonist, imetit mimetized the enhancing effects of histamine; neither agonist H1 pyridylethylamine nor the H2 dimaprit had any effect. Ranitidine and thioperamide (50 nmol) co-infused with histamine (10 nmol) fully blocked the restorative effect of histamine on retention in Dep animals. Thioperamide, in addition, blocked the enhancing effect of histamine on memory of the N-dep animals as well. None of the drugs used given into BLA had any effect on open-field or elevated plus-maze behavior in N-dep or Dep rats. Our results are limited to experimental design in rats. Extrapolation i.e. in humans requires further experimentations. The present results suggest that the memory deficit induced by early postnatal maternal deprivation in rats may at least in part be due to an impairment of histamine H3 receptor-mediated mediated mechanisms in the BLA.