Critical Determinants of Nonspatial Working Memory Deficits in Rats With Conventional Lesions of the Hippocampus or Fornix

Rats with conventional lesions of the hippocampus or fornix were compared postoperatively with controls on nonspatial memory tasks. Neither lesion impaired delayed matching-to-sample (DMS) performance in a discrete-trial task involving "pseudo-trial-unique" complex stimuli. An impairment e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral neuroscience 1993-06, Vol.107 (3), p.420-433
Main Authors: Rawlins, J. N. P, Lyford, G. L, Seferiades, A, Deacon, R. M. J, Cassaday, H. J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anatomical correlates of behavior
Animal
Animals
Appetitive Behavior - physiology
Attention - physiology
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain
Brain Mapping
Discrimination Learning - physiology
Fornix
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hippocampus
Hippocampus - physiology
Male
Memory
Mental Recall - physiology
Neural Pathways - physiology
Neurological disorders
Orientation - physiology
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Problem Solving - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Rats
Rats, Inbred Strains
Retention (Psychology) - physiology
Rodents
Short Term Memory
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Summary:Rats with conventional lesions of the hippocampus or fornix were compared postoperatively with controls on nonspatial memory tasks. Neither lesion impaired delayed matching-to-sample (DMS) performance in a discrete-trial task involving "pseudo-trial-unique" complex stimuli. An impairment emerged if a single pair of complex stimuli was used throughout each day's session, and the greatest impairment was obtained with the use of a single pair of less complex stimuli throughout each day's test. Transfer to a continuous DMS task with no explicit intertrial interval produced a different pattern because both lesion and control levels of performance were depressed when two complex stimuli were used repeatedly. A final, separate discrimination learning experiment showed that hippocampectomized rats readily discriminated between the stimuli associated with the greatest lesion-induced DMS deficit. Hippocampal dysfunction thus produces clear deficits on non-spatial memory tasks under appropriate test conditions.
ISSN:0735-7044
1939-0084
DOI:10.1037/0735-7044.107.3.420