The role of catecholamines in retention performance of a partially baited radial eight-arm maze for rats.

To assess the possible involvement of catecholaminergic neurotransmitters in maintenance of spatial cognition, the present work investigated the effects of dopaminergic and noradrenergic receptor antagonists on memory performance of rats in a partially baited radial eight-arm maze. Food-deprived rats were first trained to enter the arms baited with chocolate, and each subject was then randomly assigned to receive further training in either a place version or a cue version of the task. A specific pattern with four arms being baited was used throughout experimentation as the procedure for the place task; whereas four randomly chosen arms, each cued with a piece of sandpaper on the arm entrance, were baited from trial to trial as the procedure of the cue task. For drug evaluation, well-trained subjects were challenged with systemic injections of SCH23390, spiperone, haloperidol, prazosin, yohimbine, and propranolol. Regarding the place task, SCH23390, haloperidol, and propranolol, but not the other three drugs, significantly impaired behavioral performance by increasing the number of arm entries as well as the time to complete the task. The accuracy of performance as measured by the number of entries on the cue task was not significantly affected by any of these drugs tested. However, the times to complete the cue task were significantly increased with all drugs except yohimbine. These data show that blocking different catecholaminergic receptor subtypes produced distinct deficit patterns on the retention performance in a partially baited radial eight-arm maze. Evidently, both D1 and D2 dopamine receptors as well as beta noradrenergic receptors are important in expression of spatial memory.