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Methamphetamine-use experience is associated with deficits in hippocampal-dependent spatial memory and navigation

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Alisha Schaefer¹ (), Hyeon Jung Heselton, Hillary Schwarb; ¹University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Methamphetamine is an addictive psychostimulant that remains a significant public health concern in the United States. Methamphetamine use has been associated with structural changes in the hippocampus, a region crucial for forming new spatial memories. While the effects of methamphetamine-use on spatial memory have been heavily investigated in rodents, these effects remain underinvestigated in humans. To address this gap, the current study recruited 26 community-dwelling individuals who have used methamphetamine regularly in the past 12 months, and 26 methamphetamine-naïve participants matched on sex and age. Participants completed two spatial memory assessments, a Virtual Morris Water Maze (VMWM) task and a Spatial Reconstruction task (SRT). In the VMWM, participants used a joystick to repeatedly navigate around a pool searching for a hidden platform. Total distance traveled and time spent searching for the platform was recorded on each trial. Across 15 search trials, individuals with methamphetamine-use experience were slower and traveled farther distances before finding the hidden platform. These findings suggest impaired spatial memory and navigation skills in individuals with methamphetamine-use experience. In the SRT task, participants studied the locations of 2-8 randomly placed objects and attempted to reconstruct the studied display after a short delay. At all set sizes, individuals with methamphetamine-use experience were significantly impaired, even when attempting to remember the location of only two objects. Together, these findings underscore the need to further characterize spatial memory deficits in individuals with methamphetamine-use experience, given that such impairments may have detrimental effects on everyday functioning and spatial navigation.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic