Organizational changes in cholinergic activity and enhanced visuospatial memory as a function of choline administered prenatally or postnatally or both.

Meck, Warren H., Smith, Rebecca A., Williams, Christina L.·1989·Behavioral Neuroscience
DOI 10.1037//0735-7044.103.6.1234

Abstract

This experiment was an examination of the effects of supplemental dietary choline chloride given prenatally (to the diet of pregnant rats) and postnatally (intubed directly into the stomachs of rat pups) on memory function and neurochemical measures of brain cholinergic activity of male albino rats when they became adults. The data demonstrate that perinatal choline supplementation causes (a) long-term facilitative effects on working and reference memory components of a 12-arm radial maze task, and (b) alternations of muscarinic receptor density as indexed by [3H]quinuclidinyl benzilate (QNB) binding and choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) levels in the hippocampus and frontal cortex of adult rats. An analysis of the relationship between these organizational changes in brain and memory function indicated that the ChAT-to-QNB ratio in the hippocampus is highly correlated with working memory errors, and this ratio in the frontal cortex is highly correlated with reference memory errors.

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  2. Profound effects of combining choline and piracetam on memory enhancement and cholinergic function in aged rats
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Cited by (6)

  1. Choline: Critical Role During Fetal Development and Dietary Requirements in Adults
    Zeisel, Steven H. · 2006 · Annual Review of Nutrition
  2. Choline, an essential nutrient for humans
    Zeisel, Steven H., Da Costa, Kerry‐Ann, Franklin, Peter D., Alexander, Edward A., Lamont, J. Thomas, Sheard, Nancy F., Beiser, Alexa · 1991 · The FASEB Journal
  3. Organizational effects of early gonadal secretions on sexual differentiation in spatial memory.
    Williams, Christina L., Barnett, Allison M., Meck, Warren H. · 1990 · Behavioral Neuroscience
  4. Choline, a Vital Amine
    Blusztajn, Jan Krzysztof · 1998 · Science
  5. Metabolic imprinting of choline by its availability during gestation: implications for memory and attentional processing across the lifespan
    Meck, Warren H, Williams, Christina L · 2003 · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Organizational changes in cholinergic activity and enhanced visuospatial memory as a function of choline administered prenatally or postnatally or both. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0735-7044.103.6.1234
The paper
Meck, W. H., Smith, R. A., & Williams, C. L. (1989). Organizational changes in cholinergic activity and enhanced visuospatial memory as a function of choline administered prenatally or postnatally or both. Behavioral Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1037//0735-7044.103.6.1234

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Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.