With the prevalent issue of drug abuse in society, research regarding the effects of ketamine, a drug frequently abused by youth in club settings, has increased. Despite its potential for misuse, ketamine has demonstrated potential as a fast-acting antidepressant and seems to work well for relieving treatment-resistant depression. However, previous research has shown ketamine use may cause impairments in frontal and medial temporal lobe functioning, leading to problems with memory. While under the influence of ketamine, individuals also display problems with spatial working memory when compared to individuals not dosed with ketamine. The majority of previous research has examined the short-term impact of ketamine use with studies on neurodevelopment largely confined to postnatal exposure. In the present study, the long-term effects on memory caused by repeated ketamine exposure during late adolescence were examined. Rats were used as nonhuman models in order to investigate the cognitive risks resulting from chronic use of ketamine. The results indicated that low-ketamine dosed rats demonstrated significantly better spatial memory recall compared to high-ketamine dosed rats. In addition, high-ketamine dosed rats appeared to struggle more with working memory than the rats in the low-ketamine and control groups. Similarly, both drug groups showed significantly more working memory and reference memory errors than the control group. This indicates that higher doses of ketamine during late adolescence may cause working and spatial memory impairments later in life.
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