Research on how steroid hormones mediate mnemonic processes have focused on effects
of 17beta-estradiol (E(2)); yet, progesterone (P(4)) co-varies with E(2) across endogenous
hormonal milieu, and itself may influence cognitive processes. We investigated the
hypothesis that acute P(4) treatment enhances cognitive performance compared to vehicle.
Ovariectomized (OVX) c57/BL6J mice were randomly assigned to be subcutaneously injected
with oil vehicle or P(4) (10mg/kg). Mice were trained in the spontaneous alternation,
object recognition, object placement, water maze, or fear conditioning tasks, and
injected with vehicle or P(4) before training or immediately post-training, and then
were tested 1, 4, or 24h later. The data obtained from these experiments supported
our hypothesis. P(4) increased the percentage of spontaneous alterations made in a
T-maze more so than did vehicle. P(4), compared to vehicle, increased the percentage
of time spent exploring the novel object in the object recognition task, but did not
alter performance in the object placement task. P(4), compared to vehicle, decreased
latencies to reach the location in the water maze where the platform had been during
training in a probe trial, but did not alter performance in the control, cued trial.
Compared to vehicle, P(4) treatment increased freezing in contextual and cued fear
testing. Thus, acute P(4) treatment to OVX mice can improve cognitive performance
across a variety of tasks.