Nobiletin improves emotional and novelty recognition memory but not spatial referential memory

In this study, 8-week-old male mice were tested using behavioral measurements for working, spatial referential, emotional and visual recognition memory after daily administration of nobiletin. While nobiletin did not induce any change of spontaneous activity in the open field test, freezing by fea r conditioning and novel object recognition increased. However, the effectiveness of spatial navigation in the Y-maze and Morris water maze was not improved. These results mean that nobiletin can specifically improve memories of emotionally salient information associated with fear and novelty, but n ot of spatial information without emotional saliency. Accordingly, the use of nobiletin on normal subjects as a memory enhancer would be more effective on emotional types but may have limited value for the improvement of episodic memories.
Source: Journal of Natural Medicines - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research