The effects of cholesterol on learning and memory.

ABSTRACT: Cholesterol is vital to normal brain function including learning and memory but that involvement is as complex as the synthesis, metabolism and excretion of cholesterol itself. Dietary cholesterol influences learning tasks from water maze to fear conditioning even though cholesterol does not cross the blood brain barrier. Excess cholesterol has many consequences including peripheral pathology that can signal brain via cholesterol metabolites, pro-inflammatory mediators and antioxidant processes. Manipulations of cholesterol within the central nervous system through genetic, pharmacological, or metabolic means circumvent the blood brain barrier and affect learning and memory but often in animals already otherwise compromised. The human literature is no less complex. Cholesterol reduction us

SUBMITTER: Schreurs BG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2900496 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature