BS, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences
Methylphenidate (MPD), commonly known as Ritalin, is widely used in treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which is one of the most common childhood psychiatric disorders (Storebo et al., 2015). Serial pattern learning is a behavioral task that depends on multiple learning and cognitive systems. Rowan et al. (2015) found in a previous study with male rats that adolescent exposure to MPD caused cognitive impairments in serial pattern learning in adulthood long after MPD exposure ended. However, no study has yet examined sex differences in the effects of early exposure to MPD on adult cognitive capacity. In this study, 12 male and 12 female rats received the same exposures via intraperitoneal injections as in the Rowan et al. (2015) study, namely, 20.0 mg/kg/day MPD, and an equal number of male and female control rats received saline vehicle for 5 days/week for 7 weeks. MPD-exposed and control rats learned to perform the same 24-element serial pattern used by Rowan et al. (2015), but the rats differed in that they were from different breeding stock and they experienced twice as many serial patterns per day in training. A significant sex difference was observed for one measure of serial pattern learning. However, we did not observe any effects of adolescent MPD for either sex in this paradigm. Our results suggest that differences in training procedures may affect the ability to measure adolescent MPD-induced impairments of adult cognition.
Committee: Stephen Fountain Ph.D. (Advisor); David Riccio Ph.D. (Committee Member); Paul Sampson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jesse Young Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Subjects: Behavioral Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Neurosciences; Psychology