Dissociation of acute and chronic intermittent phencyclidine-induced performance deficits in the 5-choice serial reaction time task: influence of clozapine.
Psychopharmacology February 1, 2011 David M Thomson, Allan McVie, Brian J Morris et al.
Cognitive problems in schizophrenia are not well treated by current drugs. The drug PCP is often used in animals to model these problems. In rats, a single dose of PCP increased impulsive, anticipatory responses 30 minutes after injection, but this effect disappeared within 24 hours. Repeated PCP treatment caused lasting delays in cognitive processing speed, which were partly improved by the antipsychotic clozapine. Clozapine also modified a measure of risk-taking versus caution (lnBeta) that was persistently altered by repeated PCP. The findings suggest that repeated PCP treatment combined with signal detection analysis provides a useful method for testing new cognitive enhancers.