Galantamine (galanthamine) The Role Of Learning And Memory

Galanthamine (Gal.) is a traditional acetyl cholinesterase (AchE) inhibitor. It was discovered to be able to improve clinical syndromes of Alzheimer' s disease (AD) recently and was anticipated to be one of new candidates of remedy for senile dementia of AD. This research observed pharmacological properties of Gal., which improves learning and memory by behavioral and electrophysiological studies of whole animals, and elucidated the mechanism of how Gal. effects from these studies.In the experiments testing mice' s abilities of learning and memory 20 minutes after intraperitoneal Gal. injection, Gal. (0.3mg/kg and 1.0mg/kg) had no effects on Morris water maze task and step-through test. Gal. increased the percentage of correct alternation in Y-maze test at the dose of 1. Omg/kg, but decreased the total arm entries. During the motor activity test, mice's motor activities decreased 0～30 minutes after intraperitoneal injection of Gal. (1.0mg/kg), and recovered when 30 minutes passed. In the next behavioral test of learning and memory 1 hour after intraperitoneal injection, Gal. had no effects on Morris water maze, step-through test and Y-maze test at the dose of 0.3mg/kg and 1.0mg/kg.