Acute and chronic effects of methsuximide and mephenytoin on the delayed-matching-to-sample performance of pigeons.

Acute and chronic effects of methsuximide and mephenytoin were examined in pigeons performing under a delayed-matching-to-sample procedure. Acute administrations of methsuximide (25-175 mg/kg) and mephenytoin (40-160 mg/kg) produced generally dose-dependent decreases in accuracy. At the two highest doses, methsuximide decreased rate of responding to the sample stimulus; mephenytoin did so only at the highest dose. At low doses, both methsuximide and mephenytoin increased response rate over control. After 20 sessions of daily exposure to methsuximide (100 mg/kg) or mephenytoin (80 mg/kg), tolerance developed to the accuracy-decreasing effects of both drugs.