| Abstract No.: | B-G2194 |
| Country: | Canada |
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| Title: | HIPPOCAMPAL LESIONS IMPAIR SPATIAL MEMORY IN A NOVELTY-INDUCED PLACE PREFERENCE PARADIGM |
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| Authors/Affiliations: | 1 Anafa Gamliel*; 1 Marilyn Tardif; 1 David Mumby; 1 Stephane Gaskin;
1 Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
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| Content: | Objectives: One of the objectives was to assess the role of hippocampus in a spatial memory paradigm that takes advantage of rats’ propensity to explore novelty. Previous studies have shown that rats spend more time with an object that has been displaced than with an object that remains in the same place in an open field. However, use of this paradigm in our laboratory has often resulted in a failure to demonstrate place memory in rats using this single measure. Therefore, a second objective of this study was to assess spatial memory expression in a modification of this place learning paradigm where rats’ memory can be assessed in 3 ways.
Materials and Methods: Rats with lesions of the hippocampus as well as sham operated controls freely explored two identical objects in a large circular open field for 5 minutes on 3 consecutive days. Following the last day of training rats were placed back in the open field with one of the objects displaced by 90o. The time spent exploring each quadrant as well as the time spent exploring the displaced and the object that remained in the same place was recorded. This resulted in 3 possible expressions of spatial memory: 1) time spent in the quadrant to which the object was displaced 2) time spent in the quadrant where the object used to be 3) the time spent exploring the displaced object.
Results: Normal rats expressed memory for the spatial location of objects by spending more time in the previous location of the displaced object. In contrast, rats with lesions of the hippocampus did not show a preference for any of the quadrants or the displaced object.
Conclusions: Expression of spatial memories may take different form within the same paradigm if task parameters permit the recording several behavioural outputs. These results suggest that failure to observe spatial memory in novelty-induced place learning paradigms may reflect a lack of sensitivity in the behavioural measure.
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