Estradiol and luteinizing hormone regulate recognition memory following subchronic phencyclidine Evidence for hippocampal GABA action.
The cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia are poorly understood and difficult to treat. Estrogens may mitigate these symptoms via unknown mechanisms. To examine these mechanisms, we tested whether increasing estradiol (E) or decreasing luteinizing hormone (LH) could mitigate short-term episodic memory loss in a phencyclidine (PCP) model of schizophrenia. We then assessed whether changes in cortical or hippocampal GABA may underlie these effects. Female rats were ovariectomized and injected subchronically with PCP. To modulate E and LH, animals received estradiol capsules or Antide injections. Short-term episodic memory was assessed using the novel object recognition task (NORT). Brain expression of GAD67 was analyzed via western blot, and parvalbumin-containing cells were counted using immunohistochemistry. Some rats received hippocampal infusions of a GABA