Gary R. Carlson, MD, College of Veterinary Medicine

C57BL/6 mice show a relationship during aging between NMDA receptor expression and spatial reference memory performance in a 12-day task. The present study was designed to determine if age-related deficits could be detected with a shorter testing protocol and whether these deficits showed a relationship with NMDA receptors. Mice were trained in a reference memory task for two days in a Morris water maze. Cued testing was performed either after or prior to reference memory testing. Crude synaptosomes were prepared from prefrontal/frontal cortex and hippocampus of the mice that underwent reference memory testing first. NMDA receptor subunit and syntaxin proteins were analyzed with Western blotting.