Involvement of rat hippocampus in visual discrimination tasks revealed by cytochrome oxidase activity.

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Involvement of rat hippocampus in visual discrimination tasks revealed by cytochrome oxidase activity. Camino Alvarez-Fidalgo1*, Nelida M. Conejo1, Hector Gonzalez-Pardo1 and Jorge L. Arias1 1 Facultad de Psicologia, Laboratorio de Psicobiologia, Spain It is generally believed that the hippocampus is not required to solve simple visual discrimination tasks. However it has been observed that damage to the hippocampus following training caused retrograde amnesia on these tasks although the same lesions caused no impairment if the animal had to relearn the task or learned a new set of discrimination tasks. A current scientific hypothesis suggests that basic discrimination tasks can be solved using two different neural systems: the hippocampal-dependent system and the striatal system.Our work aimed to assess the role of the hippocampus in a visual discrimination task. 20 male Wistar rats (200-250 g) were divided into two groups: a swim control group (n=10) and an experimental group (n=10). Rats were tested in a water T-maze. A submerged platform was placed in one of the two arms always near a visual intra-maze cue. The position of the platform and the associated visual cue changed from side to side (left or right arm) following a pseudorandom sequence. Animals were trained daily (during 6 days) using a single twelve-trial session. All subjects in the experimental group reached the learning criterion of 80% trials of correct arm choice. After training, we measured in all animals the neuronal metabolic activity in CA1, CA3 subfields, the dentate gyrus of the dorsal and ventral hippocampus and dorsomedial and dorsolateral striatum using cytochrome oxidase (CO) histochemistry. CO activity is an index of neuronal oxidative metabolic capacity related with neuronal activity. In the experimental group, CO activity was increased in the CA1 and dentate gyrus of the dorsal hippocampus as compared to swim controls. These findings suggest that a neural circuit including the dorsal hippocampus, specifically the CA1 subfield and the dentate gyrus could play an essential role in learning visual discrimination tasks. This research was supported by grant SEJ2007-63506 from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science to JLA. Conference: 41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting, Rhodes Island, Greece, 13 Sep - 18 Sep, 2009. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster presentations Citation: Alvarez-Fidalgo C, Conejo NM, Gonzalez-Pardo H and Arias JL (2009). Involvement of rat hippocampus in visual discrimination tasks revealed by cytochrome oxidase activity.. Conference Abstract: 41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.08.2009.09.084 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 05 Jun 2009; Published Online: 05 Jun 2009. * Correspondence: Camino Alvarez-Fidalgo, Facultad de Psicologia, Laboratorio de Psicobiologia, Oviedo, Spain, UO140131@uniovi.es Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Camino Alvarez-Fidalgo Nelida M Conejo Hector Gonzalez-Pardo Jorge L Arias Google Camino Alvarez-Fidalgo Nelida M Conejo Hector Gonzalez-Pardo Jorge L Arias Google Scholar Camino Alvarez-Fidalgo Nelida M Conejo Hector Gonzalez-Pardo Jorge L Arias PubMed Camino Alvarez-Fidalgo Nelida M Conejo Hector Gonzalez-Pardo Jorge L Arias Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.