Enduring cognitive deficits exist in schizophrenic patients, long-term abusers of phencyclidine (PCP), as well as in animal PCP models of schizophrenia. It has been suggested that cognitive performance and memory processes are coupled with remodeling of pyramidal dendritic spine synapses in prefrontal cortex (PFC), and that reduced spine density and number of spine synapses in the medial PFC of...
Repeated exposure to the N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist, phencyclidine, has been shown to result in biochemical and cognitive changes similar to aspects of schizophrenia. Recently, emerging evidence indicated that the symptoms of schizophrenia might result at least in part from dysfunction of local circuit neurons containing parvalbumin, including a loss of their axo-axonic projections to...
Long-term abuse of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the major psychoactive constituent of marijuana, produces behavioral and metabolic signs of frontal cortical dysfunction in humans; these effects persist even after short-term abstinence. Based on a preliminary finding that repeated administration of THC to rats reduces basal frontal cortical dopamine turnover (Jentsch et al. [1998]...