Jones Peter M, Pearce John M, Davies Vanessa J, Good Mark A, McGregor Anthony
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Wales.
Behav Neurosci. 2007 Dec;121(6):1258-71. doi: 10.1037/0735-7044.121.6.1258.
Hippocampal damage impairs navigation with respect to information provided by the shape of an arena. Recent evidence has suggested that normal rats use local geometric information, as opposed to a global geometric representation, to navigate to a correct corner. One implication of this pattern of results is that hippocampal lesions may impair processing of 1 or more of the local geometric features of an environment. The authors therefore investigated the effects of hippocampal cell loss in rats on navigation to a hidden goal with respect to a variety of local cues in an environment with a distinctive shape. Rats with lesions of the hippocampus were impaired in discriminating a right-angled corner from its mirror image. However, they were able to use cues provided by an acute-angled corner (Experiment 1) or a local polarizing cue (Experiment 2). In contrast, lesioned rats were impaired in discriminating long versus short walls (Experiment 3). Results indicate that the hippocampus plays a role in disambiguating locations by processing (metric) information related to the distance between corners.
海马体损伤会损害大鼠依据竞技场形状所提供信息进行导航的能力。最近的证据表明，正常大鼠利用局部几何信息而非全局几何表征来导航至正确角落。这一结果模式的一个含义是，海马体损伤可能会损害对环境中一个或多个局部几何特征的处理。因此，作者研究了大鼠海马体细胞缺失对在具有独特形状的环境中依据各种局部线索导航至隐藏目标的影响。海马体受损的大鼠在区分直角角落与其镜像方面存在障碍。然而，它们能够利用锐角角落提供的线索（实验1）或局部极化线索（实验2）。相比之下，受损大鼠在区分长墙与短墙方面存在障碍（实验3）。结果表明，海马体通过处理与角落间距离相关的（度量）信息在明确位置方面发挥作用。
