Objective To investigate the effects of chronic restraint stress on learning and memory in Wistar and Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Methods Healthy adult male Wistar rats (n=6) and Sprague-Dawley rats (n=6) were subjected to restraint stress 10 h daily for 28 days. After that, all rats were tested for recognition memory by novel object recognition test, and spatial memory and working memory by Morris water maze test. Results After restraint for 10 h daily for 28 days, the restraint rats of the two strains demonstrated lower discrimination index(DI)than the control group, but only SD rats showed significant difference (P<0.05). The restraint SD rats showed higher escape latency than the control rats, and on the 5th day the difference became significant (P<0.05), and there was no significant difference between Wistar restraint and control rats. The working memory test showed that restraint SD rats exibited longer escape latency than the control rats (P<0.05), while Wistar rats didn't show significant difference between the two groups. Conclusions The results of this study demonstrate that the impairments of learning and memory in SD rats subjected to restraint 10 hour per day for 28 days are more serious than that in the Wistar rats. Therefore, SD rats may be a better choice as an animal model to study the effects of chronic restraint stress on learning and memory impairment.