Attenuation of experimental retrograde amnesia through pretraining administration of a dissimilar amnestic agent.

Experiment 1 found that pretraining administration of electroconvulsive shock (ECS) attenuated ECS-induced amnesia of one-trial passive avoidance training in rats. Similarly, pretraining injections of cycloheximide (CXM) attenuated the amnestic effects of CXM at training. Experiment 2 demonstrated the ability of pretraining ECS to attenuate CXM-induced amnesia and pretraining CXM to attenuate ECS-induced amnesia. These studies join others in observing comparable behavioral effects of ECS-like amnestic agents and antimetabolite-like amnestic agents despite their different means of primary action. Collectively, these studies support the view that the two families of amnestic agents produce amnesia through a common mechanism.