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. Amphetamine and MDPV had differential effects on memory strength, but both drugs increased generalization of memory for emotional training throughout a differential modulation of the monoaminergic neurotransmissions.