Burk Joshua A
Department of Psychology, College of William and Mary, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187, USA.
Behav Processes. 2004 Nov 30;67(3):521-31. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2004.08.009.
The impact of manipulating explicit attentional demands on working memory has not been well studied in rodents. The present experiment was designed to test the effects of incorporating a retention interval in a two-lever sustained attention task that requires discrimination of visual signals and non-signals and that has previously been shown to yield valid measures of attention in the rat. Upon establishing baseline performance, additional manipulations, including presentation of a visual distracter and increasing the length and variability of the inter-trial interval were conducted. During baseline conditions, accurate detection of signals, but not non-signals, decreased as the retention interval was increased. Presentation of a flashing houselight throughout the session eliminated delay-dependent detection of signals. Increasing the inter-trial interval improved detection of signals and decreased detection of non-signals at the longest retention interval. Finally, increasing the variability of the inter-trial interval did not have significant effects on performance above and beyond the effects of increasing the inter-trial interval. The present experiment demonstrates that manipulation of explicit attentional demands can alter working memory performance in the rat. This task may be employed to understand the neuropharmacological and neuroanatomical substrates mediating memory while attentional load is systematically varied.
在啮齿动物中，操控明确的注意力需求对工作记忆的影响尚未得到充分研究。本实验旨在测试在双杠杆持续注意力任务中加入延迟间隔的效果，该任务要求区分视觉信号和非信号，且先前已证明能有效测量大鼠的注意力。在建立基线表现后，进行了额外的操控，包括呈现视觉干扰物以及增加试验间隔的长度和变异性。在基线条件下，随着延迟间隔增加，信号的准确检测减少，但非信号的准确检测未受影响。在整个实验过程中呈现闪烁的饲养箱灯光消除了与延迟相关的信号检测。增加试验间隔改善了在最长延迟间隔时信号的检测，并减少了非信号的检测。最后，增加试验间隔的变异性在增加试验间隔的影响之外，对表现没有显著影响。本实验表明，操控明确的注意力需求可改变大鼠的工作记忆表现。该任务可用于在系统改变注意力负荷的同时，理解介导记忆的神经药理学和神经解剖学基础。
