Kupunggibodan(KU), Gamisamul-tang(GA) and Whangryunhaedok-tang(WH) are clinically the most popular prescriptions as an herbal medicine in the treatment of ischemia. In order to compare and evaluate their protective effects on the ischema-induced cognitive deficits by middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO), we examined its ability to improve ischemia-induced cell loss and impairements of learning and memory in the Morris water maze and eight-arm radial arm maze. Focal cerebral ischemia produced a marked cell loss, decrease in acetylcholinesterase(AchE) reactivity in the hippocampus, and learning and memory deficits in two behavioral tasks. Pretreatment with WH (100 mg/kg, p.o.) produced a substantial increase in acquisition in the Morris water maze. Pretreatment with KU increased the perfomance of the resention test in the Morris water maze. WH, KU and GA caused a significant improvement in choice accuracy in radial arm maze test. WH was superior to KU and GA in perfomance of the radial arm maze test. Consistent with behavioral data, staining with cresyl violet showed that pretreatments with WH, but not KU and GA significantly recovered the ischemia-induced cell loss in the hippcampal CA1 area. In addition, pretreatments with WH and KU recovered the ischemia-induced reduction of AchE reactivity in the hippocampal CA1 area. These results demonstrated that KU, GA and WH have protective effects against ischimea-induced learning and memory impairments and that the efficacy was the order of WH>KU>GA in tratment of ischemia induced memory deficits. The present studies provide an evidence of KU, GA and WH as putative treatment of vascular dementia. Supported by a fund from the Ministry of Health and Welfare(HMP-00-OO-04-0004), and the Brain Korea 21 Project from Korean Ministry of Education, Korea.