The Effect of Acute Corticosterone Administration on Retrieval of Remote and Recent Memory in the Rat

It is well known that stress and glucocorticoid, modulate memory processing, though the result is completely dependent on the time of stress induction. This study investigated the effect of acute corticosterone administration on memory retrieval of recent and remote memory in a 4 trials/day (low- intensity learning) or 8 trials/ day (high- intensity learning) Morris water maze protocol.
Sixty four adult male Wistar rats were used in this research study. Corticosterone was injected subcutaneously (3 mg/kg) 30 min before the probe trial test of Morris water maze. Control animals received the vehicle.
Acute corticosterone, thirty minutes before probe test led to impairment of memory retrieval phase in recent (p
Apparently, learning enhancement was just effective for protecting deleterious effects of corticosterone in recent memory and had no effect on remote memory. Thus, acute stress may impair memory retrieval in a time-dependent manner.