A brief brain ischemia produces morphological damage of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells without affecting the sensitivities of psychoactive drugs in two types of discrete avoidance tasks in Mongolian gerbils.

Effects of subcutaneous administration of psychoactive drugs: methamphetamine (0.13-1 mg/kg), chlorpromazine (0.5-2 mg/kg), physostigmine (0.05-0.2 mg/kg), scopolamine (0.031-0.5 mg/kg), pentobarbital (5-20 mg/kg), diazepam (0.5-2 mg/kg) and morphine (1.3-5 mg/kg) on discrete lever-press and shuttle avoidance responses were investigated in Mongolian gerbils that had received a brief (5 min) bilateral brain ischemic operation. Although some of the ischemic animals tended to show a retardation of acquisition of the avoidance responses, the established baselines were almost identical between the sham-operated and ischemic groups. In the lever-press task, morphine increased the response rate, whereas chlorpromazine, physostigmine, pentobarbital and diazepam decreased both the response and avoidance rates in a dose-dependent manner. In the shuttle avoidance task, both the response and avoidance rates were dose-dependently increased by methamphetamine, scopolamine and morphine, but chlorpromazine, physostigmine, pentobarbital and diazepam dose-dependently decreased them. These drug effects were almost the same between the sham-operated and ischemic groups. However, the ischemic-operation produced a significant loss of pyramidal cells in the CA1 sector of the hippocampus, the remaining level being less than 10% that of the sham-operated control animals.