Seeking behavior of rat represents the disturbance in memory induced by ethanol

Objectives: Alcohol was detected for first time by an Iranian scientist ZakariaRazi. Given that alcohol abuse is rising in our communities, recognizing the harmful effects of alcohol seems to be necessary. The aim of this study was to assess the adverse effects of ethanol on the memory of the rats through evaluation of animals’ seeking behavior in the place using a new task. Materials Methods: This study was conducted in several stages on animals. Animal model, the Wistar rats purchased from Pasteur Institute of Iran, was tested using the Novelty seeking behavior based on a three-stage place conditioning task. The investigative behavior consists of components like sniffing, rearing, grooming and move from one side of the assessment device to its other side. Conditioning phases are the familiarization, conditioning and the test. The animals in the conditioning phase, lasting three days, were confined in only one side of the two-part equipment. The animals (n=8 for each dose group) before testing were intraperitoneallyinjected the ethanol (0.1-8 g/kg); and parallel to the procedure, the control groups just received saline solution prior to the step.Results Conclusion: Animals did not remember the information of the introduction day and showed more interest to the novel side that during conditioning were not constrained in (p 0.05). Note that very low doses of the substance (0.1-0.6 g/kg) had no significant effect; however, at the higher concentrations of ethanol (0.8-2 g/kg) the memory impairment was shown as the novel place preference independently to the dose of the material. Encoding and retrieval of information necessary a permanent comparison between the getting memories from environ with the data already exist in memory boxes. This study shows the possible harmful influence of the higher doses of ethanol after only once treatment in the rat hippocampal cortex, the area which plays an effective role in recalling of the brain notes.