Olfactory Cues Potentiate Learning of Distant Visuospatial Information

The influence of proximal olfactory cues on place learning and memory was tested in two different spatial tasks. Rats were trained to find a hole leading to their home cage or a single food source in an array of petri dishes. The two apparatuses differed both by the type of reinforcement (return to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neurobiology of learning and memory 1997-09, Vol.68 (2), p.140-153
Main Authors: Lavenex, P., Schenk, F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal
Animals
Appetitive Behavior
Association Learning
Biological and medical sciences
Cues
Discrimination Learning
Distance Perception
Escape Reaction
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Goals
Learning
Learning. Memory
Mental Recall
Motivation
Orientation
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Rats
Reaction Time
Retention (Psychology)
Smell
Species Specificity
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Summary:The influence of proximal olfactory cues on place learning and memory was tested in two different spatial tasks. Rats were trained to find a hole leading to their home cage or a single food source in an array of petri dishes. The two apparatuses differed both by the type of reinforcement (return to the home cage or food reward) and the local characteristics of the goal (masked holes or salient dishes). In both cases, the goal was in a fixed location relative to distant visual landmarks and could be marked by a local olfactory cue. Thus, the position of the goal was defined by two sets of redundant cues, each of which was sufficient to allow the discrimination of the goal location. These experiments were conducted with two strains of hooded rats (Long–Evans and PVG), which show different speeds of acquisition in place learning tasks. They revealed that the presence of an olfactory cue marking the goal facilitated learning of its location and that the facilitation persisted after the removal of the cue. Thus, the proximal olfactory cue appeared to potentiate learning and memory of the goal location relative to distant environmental cues. This facilitating effect was only detected when the expression of spatial memory was not already optimal, i.e., during the early phase of acquisition. It was not limited to a particular strain.
ISSN:1074-7427
1095-9564
DOI:10.1006/nlme.1997.3791