Functional roles of the glial glutamate transporter (GLAST) in emotional and cognitive abnormalities of mice after repeated phencyclidine administration.
Alterations of the glutamatergic system components, including N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors are relevant to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Repeated phencyclidine (PCP) administration induces several schizophrenia-like psychobehavioral abnormalities and decreases extracellular glutamate levels, which are associated with increased levels of glial glutamate and aspartate transporter (GLAST) in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of mice. In the present study, we investigated the functional roles of GLAST in the emotional and cognitive abnormalities in mice following repeated PCP administration by using GLAST heterozygous (-) mice, since GLAST mutant mice are a useful tool for elucidating the contribution of glutamate dysfunction to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. PCP-administered GLAST wild-type () mice showed enhancement of immobility in a forced swimming test, impairments of visual recognition memory in a novel object recognition test, decrease in high potassium (K