Alterations in short-term retention, conditioned avoidance response acquisition and motivation following aluminum induced neurofibrillary degeneration

Abstract

Aluminum chloride induced neurofibrillary degeneration may provide a useful model for the study of a human dementia process. This possibility was assessed in cats trained to perform on a delayed-response task, a conditioned avoidance task, visual and temporal discrimination tasks and a motivational task involving rewarding intracranial electrical stimulation. After an initial asymptomatic period short term retention and acquisition of a conditioned avoidance response were selectively impaired. The associated ultrastructural abnormalities plausibly implicate the cytoplasmic streaming mechanism in the cellular substrate for some retention and acquisition phenomena.