The Effect of Oral Lecithin on Spatial Learning of Adult Male Rats

Lecithin (phosphatidylcholine) is known as a precursor of acetyl choline. The studies on experimental animals, have shown that the cholinergic system has an important role in learning and memory. Therefore, in this study we investigated the effects of different doses of lecithin on the spatial learning. The adult male NMRI rats (250 ± 25 g and 4.5-5 months) were used. All animals were trained for a spatial learning task using T-maze and were trained for subsequently nine days based on standard method (n=7). Animals were divided into 5 groups as follows: Lecithin (480,240,120 IU/kg) 0.1ml/10g B.W was administrated for 9 days subsequently in groups 1-3, one hour before each day the experiments. lecithin’s sham group (group 4) received distilled water by gavaged, and the control group (group 5) received normal food. Statistical analysis, ANOVA, has shown that lecithin, in all three doses, decreased the mean of running times (p<0.05, p<0.001, p<0.001), but it had no significant effect on the number of errors. It seems lecithin increase acetyl choline, which in turn improves the function of cholinergic system in hippocampus.