Identifying a Potential Target for Treating Impaired Cognition in Schizophrenia

Dr. Paul Fletcher and colleagues examined the effects of repeated treatment with a stimulant, amphetamine, on rats’ performance in a test that measures sustained visual attention. Scientists studied this behaviour because is known to require the prefrontal cortex, the front portion of the front part of the brain.

Dr. Fletcher and this team first trained rats to respond to a brief light stimulus.  Once rats learned to respond to the light, they were treated with amphetamine.  Dr. Fletcher and his colleagues noted that amphetamine-treated rats less accurately responded to the light and experienced errors of omission. 

These results indicate that exposure to amphetamine brings on a long-lasting deficit in visual attention. However, both the reduced accuracy, and increased omissions, seen in amphetamine-treated rats, were reversed by injecting the rats with a D1 receptor agonist.

These results add to a growing list of deficits suggesting that an amphetamine- sensitized state may resemble the cognitive deficits experience by individuals with schizophrenia. The reversal of these deficits by a D1 receptor agonist provides further evidence that prefrontal D1 dopamine receptors are involved in cognition, and may be a potential target for treatment of impaired cognition in schizophrenia.

Visit http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/1301221a.html to view the article abstract.

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