Ricerc@Sapienza

Drugs of abuse have long been recognized to affect memory processes. Here we tested the effects of two psychostimulants, Amphetamine and the “bath salt” MDPV, on the accuracy of memory. We used the inhibitory avoidance (IA) discrimination task, a novel variant of the IA task suitable to study memory accuracy in rodents. Rats were trained and tested in three different contextually modified IA boxes, two visited during the training session and one visited only during the test session.

The mechanisms by which drugs of abuse affect the accuracy of memory processes are not well understood. Here we tested the effects of the psychostimulants Amphetamine and the “bath salt” MDPV in an inhibitory avoidance discrimination task.

Background: The substantial increase in use of 3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV), a popular recreational synthetic cathinone, has raised legitimate questions about its behavioral consequences and abuse liability.
Aims: The aim of this study was to study MDPV-induced neurobehavioral effects in the rat, using different paradigms traditionally developed to study drug-attributed addictive properties.