Abstract
The so-called club Foxy or Methoxy Foxy (5-Methoxy-N,N-di(iso)propyltryptamine hydrochloride; 5-MeO-DIPT) is a newer drug of abuse that has recently gained in popularity among recreational users as an alternative to MDMA (Ecstasy). While considerable research into the consequences of MDMA use is available, much remains unknown about the neurobiological consequences of 5-MeO-DIPT use. In the present study, beginning at 35 days of age adolescent rats were given repeated injections of 10 mg/kg of 5-MeO-DIPT, MDMA, or a corresponding volume of isotonic saline. Adult animals (135 days old) were trained and tested on a number of tasks designed to assess the impact, if any, and severity of 5-MeO-DIPT and MDMA, on a series of spatial and nonspatial memory tasks. Both the 5-MeO-DIPT- and the MDMA-treated rats were able to master the spatial navigation tests where the task included a single goal location and all groups performed comparably on these phases of training and testing. Conversely, the performance of both groups of the drug-treated rats was markedly inferior to that of the control animals on a task where the goal was moved to a new location and on a response learning task, suggesting a lack of flexibility in adapting their responses to changing task demands. In addition, in a response learning version of a learning set task, 5-MeO-DIPT rats made significantly more working memory errors than MDMA or control rats. Results are discussed in terms of observed alterations in serotonin activity in the forebrain and the consequences of compromised serotoninergic systems on cognitive processes.
Highlights
A number of reports have suggested that (+) 3,4-metylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) use in humans is associated with a variety of impairments including alterations to working memory or prospective memory, as well as alterations in executive functioning (Fox, Toplis, Turner, & Parrott, 2001; Heffernan, Jarvis, Rodgers, Scholey, & Ling, 2001; Heffernan, Ling, & Scholey, 2001; Wareing, Fisk, & Murphy, 2000)
Past research has indicated that the memory deficits involve a reference memory impairment (Sprague et al, 2003), the tasks employed did not allow for differentiation between working and reference memory deficits (Kay, Harper, & Hunt, 2010)
The effects associated with MDMA use are well known
Summary
A number of reports have suggested that (+) 3,4-metylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) use in humans is associated with a variety of impairments including alterations to working memory or prospective memory, as well as alterations in executive functioning (Fox, Toplis, Turner, & Parrott, 2001; Heffernan, Jarvis, Rodgers, Scholey, & Ling, 2001; Heffernan, Ling, & Scholey, 2001; Wareing, Fisk, & Murphy, 2000). MDMA (Zakzanis & Campbell, 2006) Consistent with these findings, in research involving the use of animal models, a number of learning and memory impairments after MDMA exposure have been reported (Able, Gudelsky, Vorhees, & Williams, 2006; Arias-Cavieres et al, 2010; Sprague, Preston, Leifheit, & Woodside, 2003; Vorhees, Reed, Skelton, & Williams, 2004; Vorhees, Schaefer, & Williams, 2007; Vorhees et al, 2009). In one recent investigation (Kay et al, 2010) designed to more precisely define the nature of the memory deficit, MDMA disrupted reference memory for the rules to successfully solve an eight-arm radial maze task
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