Anisman Hymie, McIntyre Dan C
Institute of Neuroscience, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1S 5B6.
J Neurosci. 2002 Sep 1;22(17):7809-17. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.22-17-07809.2002.
Rat lines selectively bred for differences in amygdala excitability, manifested by "fast" or "slow" kindling epileptogenesis, display several comorbid features related to anxiety and learning. To assess the nature of the learning deficits in fast kindling rats, performance was evaluated in several variants of a Morris water-maze test. Regardless of whether the location of the platform was fixed or varied over days (matching-to-place task), the fast rats displayed inferior performance, suggesting both working and reference memory impairments. Furthermore, when the position of the platform was altered after the response was acquired, fast rats were more persistent in emitting the previously acquired response. The poor performance of fast rats was also evident in both cued and uncued tasks, indicating that their disturbed learning was not simply a reflection of a spatial deficit. Moreover, fast rats could be easily distracted by irrelevant cues, suggesting that these animals suffered from an attentional disturbance. Interestingly, when rats received several training trials with the platform elevated, permitting them to develop the concept of facile escape, the performance of fast rats improved greatly. The performance disturbance in fast rats may reflect difficulties in forming a conceptual framework under conditions involving some degree of ambiguity, as well as greater distractibility by irrelevant cues. These various attributes of the fast rats may serve as a potentially useful animal model of disorders characterized by an attention deficit.
通过“快速”或“慢速”点燃癫痫发生表现出杏仁核兴奋性差异的大鼠品系，呈现出与焦虑和学习相关的几种共病特征。为了评估快速点燃大鼠学习缺陷的本质，在莫里斯水迷宫测试的几个变体中评估了其行为表现。无论平台位置是固定的还是随时间变化的（地点匹配任务），快速点燃大鼠都表现出较差的行为表现，这表明其工作记忆和参考记忆均受损。此外，当在获得反应后改变平台位置时，快速点燃大鼠更持续地发出先前获得的反应。快速点燃大鼠在有线索和无线索任务中的表现也很差，这表明它们学习障碍不仅仅是空间缺陷的反映。此外，快速点燃大鼠很容易被无关线索分散注意力，这表明这些动物存在注意力障碍。有趣的是，当大鼠在平台升高的情况下接受几次训练试验，从而使它们形成轻松逃脱的概念时，快速点燃大鼠的表现有了很大改善。快速点燃大鼠的行为表现障碍可能反映了在存在一定程度模糊性的条件下形成概念框架的困难，以及被无关线索分散注意力的程度更高。快速点燃大鼠的这些各种特征可能作为以注意力缺陷为特征的疾病的潜在有用动物模型。
