Abstract
Caffeine enhances cognition, but even high non-physiological doses have modest effects on synapses. A1 adenosine receptors (A1Rs) are antagonized by caffeine and are most highly enriched in hippocampal CA2, which has not been studied in this context. We found that physiological doses of caffeine in vivo or A1R antagonists in vitro induced robust, long-lasting potentiation of synaptic transmission in rat CA2 without affecting other regions of the hippocampus.
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Acknowledgements
We thank D. Armstrong and members of the Dudek laboratory for their input on the manuscript. This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the US National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Z01 ES 100221).
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S.B.S. and S.M.D. conceived and designed the study. Experiments were conducted and analyzed by S.B.S., D.A.C. and M.Z. S.B.S., D.A.C. and S.M.D. wrote the manuscript. S.M.D. supervised the project.
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Simons, S., Caruana, D., Zhao, M. et al. Caffeine-induced synaptic potentiation in hippocampal CA2 neurons. Nat Neurosci 15, 23–25 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2962
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2962
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