The food additive aspartame, commonly known by its trademark name NutraSweet, is used world wide in over 5000 food and beverages. Anecdotal and experimental evidence suggest aspartame may have detrimental effects on cognition and memory. In the present study, rats were fed aspartame for a 3 month period and their spatial memory was tested in the radial arm maze. It was hypothesized that rats who received aspartame would commit more memory errors than control rats that were not fed aspartame. Previous evidence also suggests aspartic acid creates lesions in the brain areas surrounding circumventricular organs (CVO). The present study attempted to replicate those findings. Results from the present study found that animals that were given aspartame committed significantly more long-term memory errors and short-term memory errors in the eight arm radial-arm maze. The deficits were mostly related to errors in the first trial. The results also suggested animals given aspartame had significantly fewer neurons in the arcuate nucleus when compared to control animals.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TCU/oai:etd.tcu.edu:etd-10272008-090832 |
| Date | 27 October 2008 |
| Creators | Berny, Meghan Christine |
| Contributors | Timothy M Barth |
| Publisher | Texas Christian University |
| Source Sets | Texas Christian University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/msword |
| Source | http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-10272008-090832/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to TCU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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