School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Wales, UK.
Brain Res Bull. 2012 Jun 1;88(2-3):237-50. doi: 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2010.10.005. Epub 2010 Oct 20.
Neurodegenerative diseases of the basal ganglia have been associated with impairments in 'implicit learning', failing to detect repeated sequences embedded in long series of random stimuli. The present study has introduced a novel 5-step sequence learning task (ESLeT) for rats, in which the animals learn to respond to randomly occurring stimuli in a horizontal spatial array, and to chain 5 sequential stimulus-response choices to gain food reward. The rats exhibit improved performance in both speed and accuracy of responding when the sequence is predictable following the first stimulus in the chain, suggesting a comparable capacity for 'implicit learning'. Performance was more rapid but less accurate when the rats were pre-treated with the dopamine indirect agonist amphetamine, markedly disrupted in both dependent variables when pre-treated with the cholinergic antagonist, scopolamine, and modestly disrupted following bilateral striatal lesions, with distinctive patterns of error and changes in the precise patterns of stimulus-by-stimulus responding associated with each experimental treatment. The ESLeT task provides a new test with distinctive advantages for the analysis of vigilance, serial responding and procedural motor learning in animal models of human neurodegenerative disease.
基底神经节的神经退行性疾病与“内隐学习”的损伤有关，无法检测到嵌入在随机刺激长序列中的重复序列。本研究为大鼠引入了一种新的 5 步序列学习任务（ESLeT），在该任务中，动物学会对水平空间排列中随机出现的刺激做出反应，并对 5 个连续的刺激-反应选择进行连锁，以获得食物奖励。当序列在链中的第一个刺激之后是可预测的时，大鼠在反应速度和准确性方面的表现都有所提高，这表明它们具有类似的“内隐学习”能力。当大鼠预先用多巴胺间接激动剂安非他命处理时，其表现更快，但准确性较低；当用胆碱能拮抗剂东莨菪碱预先处理时，这两个因变量都明显受到干扰；双侧纹状体损伤后也会受到轻度干扰，与每种实验处理相关的错误模式和刺激-反应精确模式的变化都具有独特的特征。ESLeT 任务为分析人类神经退行性疾病动物模型中的警觉性、连续反应和程序性运动学习提供了一种具有独特优势的新测试。
