Effects of neurosteroids -mainly pregneneologne and pregnenolone sulfate- on memory acquisition in male rats. Particularly, the effects of neurosteroids on different learning paradigms, i.e. appetitive and aversive paradigms, and their possible different

YUNES, R

Workshop; IIIrd International Workshop in Neuroendocrinology; 2015

INBIOMED-IMBECU-CONICET

From an evolutionary point of view, learning and memory are two absolutely necessary conditions to thrive in life. In this talk we will show the behavioral results of injecting pregnenolone and pregnenolone sulfate in lateral septum nucleus of adult male rats in order to test their effects on two learning paradigms, i.e. an appetitive task and an aversive one. From our data we will show that those neuroactive steroids have indeed a clear amnesic effect on acquisition, but completely different according to the nature of the task. Briefly, while one of them is amnesic in the appetitive task -pregnenolone sulfate- the other one -prenenolone- is amnesic in the aversive task. Since emotionality of both tasks is completely different, these results are suggestive of a possible role of pregnenolone as a kind of molecular switch according to its sulfation state.