Impairment of retention of avoidance responses in rats by posttraining diethyldithiocarbamate.

Diethyldithiocarbamate (680 mg/kg), administered immediately after training, impaired rats' retention, 6 days later, of a one-way active avoidance task and a discriminated active avoidance task. In the discrimination task a lower dose (340 mg/kg) also impaired retention. Delayed posttraining injections did not affect retention in either task. The findings indicate that DDC can have similar effects on retention of tasks requiring quite different behavioral responses.