Abstract: Objective To investigate the effect of memantine on learning and memory disorder induced by cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R)of rats.Methods Model of cerebral ischemia was established by the four-vessel occlusion method.Memantine was intraperitoneally inj ected for five days after the ischemia.Cresyl violet staining was used to observe the survival neurons in pyramidal cell layer of the hippocamal CA1 region and Morris water maze test was performed.Results Compared with those of saline control group, the escape latency of the orientation navigation experiment in sham group and memantine group was significantly shortened(P<0.01);the escape latency of I/R group was significantly longer than that of sham group and memantine group(P<0.01),but the escape latency of I/R group had no significant difference compared with that saline control group(P>0.05);Compared with those of control group,the crossing platform time,time percent of swimming in northwest and neuronal cell loss in hippocamal CA1 region in sham group and memantine group significantly raised(P<0.01),but the three items of I/R group significantly reduced in comparison with the above two groups(P<0.01),while they still had no significant differences compared with those of saline group(P>0.05).Conclusion Memantine can improve the learning and memory disorder induced by cerebral ischemia/reperfusion in rats through decreasing neuronal cell death.

Key words: reperfusion inj ury, rats, neurons, memory disordes