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As a traditional Chinese medicine with food and drug homology, Polygonati rhizoma is rich in the chemical components including polysaccharides, flavonoids, steroidalsaponins, alkaloids and so on. It has a variety of biological activities, such as anti-oxidation, immunoregulation, neuroprotection, etc. In recent years, the reports about the neuroprotection of Polygonati rhizoma have received wide attention. This paper reviews the research progress on improving cognition, anti-depressant and improving sleep of Polygonati rhizoma aqueous extracts, polysaccharides and saponins in the past decade. The mechanisms involve anti-inflammation, antioxidant, regulating neurotrophic factors, regulating neurotransmitters, regulating neuroplasticity, promoting the activity of the central cholinergic system, affecting the structure and function of the hippocampus and so on. At the same time, this paper also analyzes the development status of Polygonati rhizoma, which provide reference for the research and development of Polygonati rhizoma with the neuroregulatory functionalproducts.

Objective: To study the preventive effect and the related mechanisms of polysaccharide of Polygonati Rhizoma (PSP) on cognitive impairments induced by sleep interruption (SI) in mice. Methods: The 72 ICR mice were randomly divided into the control group, the SI model group, the positive control (ginkgo biloba extract) group and the PSP (100, 200, 400 mg/kg) groups. After 14 days of pretreatment, all groups except the control group received sleep interruption which lasted for 14 days. Thereafter, the behavioral tests were performed by using the open field test, the object recognition experiment, the Morris water maze task and the passive avoidance test. Following the behavioral tests, the biochemical analysis was conducted by measuring the levels of IL-1β and IL-6 in the serum and the hippocampus, the contents of GABA and Ach in the hippocampus. Results: The open field test result showed, there were no significant changes in the locomotor activities of mice among all groups (P>0.05). Compared with the SI model group, SPS (100, 200, 400 mg∙kg−1) treatment markedly elevating discrimination index (DI) in object recognition experiment (P