Effects of NMDA antagonists ketamine, methoxetamine and phencyclidine on the odor span test of working memory in rats
Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology February 1, 2018 Michael Mathews, R. N. Mead, M. Galizio
NMDA receptor antagonists impair working memory in rodents, but the effects differ across drugs. In the odor span task, which tests memory for multiple stimuli, phencyclidine (PCP) and methoxetamine (MXE) reduced accuracy only when memory load was high, without affecting simple discrimination. Ketamine (KET) produced less selective impairments. These findings support the glutamate hypothesis, which links NMDA receptor hypofunction to cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, but suggest that not all NMDA antagonists affect memory identically.