Effects of Posttraining Damage to the Pedunculopontine Tegmental Nucleus on Conditioned Stimulus Transfer in Two-Way Active Avoidance in Rats

• Published in: Behavioral neuroscience 2007-04, Vol.121 (2), p.411-421
• Main Authors: Homs-Ormo, Sandra, Torras-Garcia, Meritxell, Portell-Cortés, Isabel, Edo-Izquierdo, Sílvia, Morgado-Bernal, Ignacio, Coll-Andreu, Margalida
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation; Animal; Animal behavior; Animals; Avoidance Conditioning; Avoidance Learning - physiology; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Body Weight - physiology; Brain; Conditioned Stimulus; Conditioning, Operant - physiology; Effects; Experiments; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Handling (Psychology); Male; Pedunculopontine Tegmental Nucleus - physiology; Photic Stimulation; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Rats; Rats, Wistar; Rodents; Stereotaxic Techniques; Tegmentum; Transfer (Learning)
• ISSN: 0735-7044; 1939-0084
• DOI: 10.1037/0735-7044.121.2.411

The effects of posttraining excitotoxic lesions of the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPTg) on two-way active avoidance after changing the conditioned stimulus (CS) used during prelesion training were examined. Prelesion training was carried out with either a tone or a light as the CS, and this CS was changed during postlesion training. Replacing the tone with a light reduced the performance of control and lesioned rats, but the degree of reduction was higher in the latter. Replacing the light with a tone had slight detrimental effects in lesioned rats but not in controls. Thus, posttraining PPTg lesions slowed down the reacquisition of shuttle-box avoidance under conditions of CS transfer, an effect that may be attributable to disruption of attention and/or gating of sensory stimuli.