Comparing the effects of subchronic phencyclidine and medial prefrontal cortex dysfunction on cognitive tests relevant to schizophrenia.
Psychopharmacology November 1, 2015 K A L McAllister, A C Mar, D E Theobald et al.
A double-dissociation was found between two cognitive tasks in rats: dysfunction of the medial prefrontal cortex impaired learning of object-location associations but not spontaneous novel object recognition, while subchronic phencyclidine (scPCP) impaired novel object recognition but not object-location associative learning. Both scPCP and mPFC dysfunction similarly facilitated reversal learning. The pattern of impairment after scPCP raises questions about its validity as a model of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia, especially if faithfully replicating the effects of mPFC dysfunction is important.