Lithium attenuates stress-induced impairment of long-term potentiation induction

Abstract

Stress impairs the induction of long-term potentiation in the hippocampus as well as hippocampus-dependent memory. Lithium, a classical mood stabilizer, is known to have bene¢cial e¡ects on stress-induced impairment of spatial memory. In the present study, we investigated lithium e¡ects on the impairment of long-term potentiation induction after exposure to acute immobilization stress. As previously reported, immobilization stress impaired long-term potentiation induction in the CA1region of rat hippocampal slices.Treating the slices with 0.6 or 1mM lithium attenuated impaired long-term potentiation induction in stressed animals. Lithium was without e¡ect on long-term potentiation induction in unstressed animals or baseline synaptic responses in unstressed or stressed animals. These results demonstrate a protective e¡ect of lithium against stress-induced impairment of long-term potentiation induction.

Nitric oxide modulates state dependency induced by lithium in an inhibitory avoidance task in mice

“…Lithium treatment inhibited learning, memory and speed of information processing in patients with bipolar disorders and to some extent in control subjects (Kocsis et al, 1993;Honig et al, 1999;Stip et al, 2000;Pachet and Wisniewski, 2003). Lithium, however, was also reported to enhance memory in some tasks (Tsaltas et al, 2007), or to attenuate memory impairments induced by other factors (Lim et al, 2005). Although it has been shown that lithium can regulate signal transduction pathways in several regions of the brain, and alter the function of several neurotransmitter systems (Branisteanu and Volle, 1975;Manji et al, 1995), the definitive mechanism(s) for the drugs effects has not been established.…”

“…Thus, the effects of lithium on memory may suggest a state dependency. It has been also shown that lithium attenuates stress-induced memory impairment (Lim et al, 2005). An alternate explanation is that the effects on memory retrieval of a drug given before the retention test simply depend on how well the information has been stored previously.…”

Lithium ameliorates phenotypic deficits in a mouse model of fragile X syndrome

“…Electrophysiologically, chronic lithium increases long-term potentiation (LTP) in hippocampal neurons (Shim et al . 2007) and alleviates stress-induced LTP impairment (Lim et al . 2005).…”

Anti-Stress Effects of Mood Stabilizers and Relevance to Their Therapeutic Actions

“…A study showed that acute immobilization stress impaired LTP induction in the CA1 region, which was restored by addition of lithium of therapeutic concentration to artificial CSF in brain slices. However, the addition of lithium to slices from non-stressed animals had no effect (Lim et al, 2005).…”