Abstract
Operant delayed alternation tasks are useful tools for assessing age-related memory deficits in rats. Decreased accuracy in these tasks seems to reflect mainly an inability to remember and utilize recent events (short-term memory deficit). The task described in this unit requires the rat to learn a delayed alternation for food reward in a standard Skinner box, so it must retain spatial information over a short period of time. Aged rats exhibit clear short-term memory impairments (decrease in response accuracy) in the task compared to young rats during learning and later, after extended training, also exhibit performance deficits. An advantage of studying these two phases is the possibility to examine either chronic effects (repeated drug administrations during acquisition) or acute effects (single treatments given before the test session during the stabilized performance phase). Operant delayed alternation tasks are useful tools for assessing age-related memory deficits in rats
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