Figure 6.

Blocking the formation of extracellular adenosine derived from ATP prevents 6‐OHDA‐induced motor and memory dysfunction. (a) The continuous intracerebroventricular infusion of the CD73 inhibitor α,β‐methylene ADP (AOPCP, 100 μM) attenuated the apomorphine‐induced contralateral rotation in rats unilaterally challenged with 6‐OHDA. (b) The unilateral injection of 6‐OHDA decreased the use of the contralateral limb, especially together with the ipsilateral limb, and this was restored after treatment with AOPCP (100 μM continuous intracerebroventricular infusion). (c) Neither the unilateral injection of 6‐OHDA nor the treatment with AOPCP altered the spontaneous locomotion in the open field. (d) AOPCP also prevented the decreased recognition memory of rats intra‐striatally injected with 6‐OHDA, as evaluated in the novel object recognition task: All groups of rats investigated equally both objects in the training phase (not shown), but only 6‐OHDA‐lesioned rats failed to discriminate the novel object during the test phase (e), without alteration of the total distance travelled during the test session between the four groups (not shown). Data shown are means ± SEM (n = 10 rats per group). *P < .05, significantly different from saline; **P < .05 significantly different from 6‐OHDA; # P < .05 significantly different from saline; two‐way ANOVA with Newman–Keuls post hoc test