Abstract
Central cholinergic neurons appear to play a critical role in cognitive function (Hington and Aprison, 1976; Deutsch and Rogers, 1979). Furthermore, it has been suggested that impaired cholinergic transmission may be at least partly responsible for the memory deficits occurring during aging (Drachman and Leavitt, 1974; Bartus et al., 1982; Davis and Yesavage, 1979). Much of the support for this hypothesis derives from pharmacological studies. For example, when scopolamine, a muscarinic receptor antagonist, was administered to yound adult humans and monkeys, decrements in cognitive task performance resulted which mimic those deficits found in aged subjects (Safer and Allen, 1971; Drachman and Leavitt, 1974; Bartus and Johnson, 1976). The scopolamine-induced cognitive dysfunction is selectively reversed by drugs which enhance cholinergic transmission (Drachman, 1977; Bartus, 1978a). Cholinomimetic drugs, such as physostig- mine or arecoline or other pharmacologic cholinergic enhancement result in improved performance on memory tasks (Davies et al., 1978; Sitaram et al., 1978; Bartus, 1979) and also reverse the memory impairments due to age.
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Friedman, E., Brennan, M.J., Lerer, B.E., Sherman, K.A., Schweitzer, J.W., Kuster, J. (1986). Neurochemical and Behavioral Alterations in Aging and in Animal Models of Alzheimer’s Disease. In: Fisher, A., Hanin, I., Lachman, C. (eds) Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease. Advances in Behavioral Biology, vol 29. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2179-8_47
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