Nikiforuk_2015_Eur.Neuropsychopharmacol_25_1300

A wide body of preclinical and clinical data suggests that alpha 7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (alpha7-nAChRs) may represent useful targets for cognitive improvement in schizophrenia and Alzheimers disease. A promising recent approach is based on the use of positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) of alpha7-nAChRs due to their several advantages over the direct agonists. Nevertheless, the behavioural effects of this class of compounds, particularly with regard to higher-order cognitive functions, have not been broadly characterised. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the procognitive efficacies of type I and type II alpha7-nAChRs PAMs, N-(4-chlorophenyl)-[[(4-chlorophenyl)amino]methylene]-3-methyl-5-isoxazoleacet-am ide (CCMI) and N-(5-Chloro-2,4-dimethoxyphenyl)-N'-(5-methyl-3-isoxazolyl)urea (PNU-120596) in the novel object recognition task (NORT), attentional set-shifting task (ASST) and five-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT) in rats. Additionally, the effects of galantamine, an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor that also allosterically modulates nAChRs, were assessed. We report that CCMI (0.3-3mg/kg), PNU-120596 (0.3-3mg/kg) and galantamine (1-3mg/kg) attenuated the delay-induced impairment in NORT performance and facilitated cognitive flexibility in the ASST. Methyllycaconitine (3mg/kg) blocked the actions of CCMI, PNU-120596 and galantamine in the NORT and ASST, suggesting that the procognitive effects of these compounds are alpha7-nAChRs-dependent. However, none of the compounds tested affected the rats' attentional performance in the 5-CSRTT. The present findings confirm and extend the observations indicating that the positive allosteric modulation of alpha7-nAChRs enhances recognition memory and cognitive flexibility in preclinical tasks. Therefore, the present study supports the utility of alpha7-nAChRs PAMs as a potential cognitive enhancing therapy.