Date of Award
1-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College/School
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department/Program
Psychology
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Jennifer Pardo
Committee Member
Alan Pehrson
Committee Member
Julian Keenan
Abstract
Treatment-Resistant Depressive Disorder (TRD) is a prevailing psychological condition characterized by low affect, cognitive dysfunction, and suboptimal responses to conventional antidepressants. Over the past decade, a collective number of studies have proposed ketamine as a rapid-acting antidepressant. In this study, we investigated the cognitive and molecular effects of ketamine on Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats—a potential biological model of depression—by the novel object placement (NOP) test and quantitative analysis of the AMPA receptor subunit GluA1 expression by Western blot. We predicted that a ketamine administration would improve spatial memory performance, as demonstrated by the NOP test, and increase the expression of AMPA receptors in the hippocampus of WKY rats. Our results showed no improvement in the NOP task performance between groups. In addition, we found no changes in AMPA receptor expression (GluA1) compared to Wistar-Hannover (WIS) control rats. The findings reported here are also inconsistent with a previous work showing an effect of ketamine on AMPA receptor expression, highlighting discrepancies in the current literature.
File Format
Recommended Citation
Lune, Calypso, "The Effects of Ketamine on the Expression of Hippocampal α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) and Novel Object Placement Performance in a Wistar-Kyoto Model Depression" (2025). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1487.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1487