Study on learning ability and expressions of synaptic associated protein in hippocampus of aging rats

To investigate the learning activity of the aging rats and the role of synaptic associated proteins in Y-maze bright-dark discrimination learning Male Sprague-Dawley rats of aged(22-month) group and young(weaning period) control group were trained by Y-maze and then the expressions of growth-associated protein 43(GAP-43) and synaptophysin(Syn) in hippocampus of the two groups rats were examined by immunohistochemistry and Western blot.Firstly,the results showed that the learning ability of the aged group rats was stronger while the memory ability of the young control group rats was stronger.Secondly,the expression of GAP-43 in hippocampus of the aged group was greater than that of the young control group.However,from Western blot results,we found that lower expression of Syn was shown in the hippocampus of the aged group.These results suggest that GAP-43 and Syn may be involved in the process of Y-maze discriminative learning and memory and the potential function of repairing degenerative neurons in the aged brain might be remained in the rats.