Remembrance of odors past: enhancement by central facilitation of AMPA receptors.

Pharmacological facilitation of the alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole (AMPA)-type glutamate receptor has recently been demonstrated to enhance synaptic responses, promote long-term potentiation (LTP) induction in freely moving rats, and facilitate learning and retention of information. The present study verifies and extends the behavioral action of allosteric AMPA receptor modulation by showing that the benzoyl-piperidine compound BDP-12 promotes retention of olfactory and transient spatial memory in a dose-dependent fashion; is only effective when given before but not after training, consistent with the hypothesis that glutamatergic facilitation enhances information encoding by means of action on the machinery involved in LTP induction; and, following suboptimal training in a paradigm of enduring memory, prolongs the ability of rats to retain odors by extending the decay of weak memory traces.