Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, United States.
Physiol Behav. 2013 Oct 2;122:216-21. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2013.04.001. Epub 2013 Apr 23.
The water maze is a complex spatial task that requires the coordination of multiple systems to perform efficiently. Various factors have been shown to influence performance in this task, including motivational state and prior experience. Although a consistent sex difference has been observed in acquiring the water maze in rats, the contribution of the various factors in female rat performance has not been fully assessed. Therefore, the current study tested the effects of motivation as manipulated by water temperature of the maze and prior experience in the maze on the performance of female rats. It was hypothesized that females pretrained in the maze would perform better than those without exposure to the water maze, regardless of water temperature, but in naïve rats, colder water would improve performance as shown previously in male rats. For pretraining, female rats were taught to find a visible platform in cold (19 °C, 4 trials on one day) and warm (25 °C, 4 trials on one day) water before acquisition trials, with the order of the water temperature randomly assigned. Control rats were not given any training and were naïve to the water maze procedure. Pretrained and control rats were then tested to locate a hidden platform in either cold or warm water for 5 consecutive days. Overall, pretraining had a significant effect on distance, latency, and directness of path to the platform. Water temperature did not show a significant effect on any measure or a significant interaction with pretraining. Thus, while our hypothesis that pretraining would improve performance was supported, the results did not support the prediction that water temperature would also significantly influence performance. These results show that non-spatial pretraining can critically improve the performance of females in acquiring a place strategy for the hidden platform, irrespective of water temperature.
水迷宫是一项复杂的空间任务，需要多个系统的协调才能高效运作。各种因素已被证明会影响在该任务中的表现，包括动机状态和先前的经验。尽管在大鼠中观察到获得水迷宫的性别差异一致，但女性大鼠表现中各种因素的贡献尚未得到充分评估。因此，当前的研究测试了动机（通过水迷宫的水温来操纵）和在水迷宫中的先前经验对雌性大鼠表现的影响。假设经过水迷宫训练的雌性大鼠的表现会优于未接触过水迷宫的大鼠，而与水温无关，但在未接触过水迷宫的大鼠中，如之前在雄性大鼠中所示，较冷的水会提高表现。在预训练中，雌性大鼠在获得试验之前，被教导在冷水中（19°C，一天 4 次）和温水中（25°C，一天 4 次）寻找可见平台，水温的顺序随机分配。对照大鼠没有接受任何训练，对水迷宫程序一无所知。然后，对经过预训练和对照大鼠进行测试，要求它们在冷或温水环境中连续 5 天找到隐藏的平台。总体而言，预训练对距离、潜伏期和到达平台的路径直接性有显著影响。水温对任何测量或与预训练的显著交互作用均无显著影响。因此，虽然我们关于预训练可以提高表现的假设得到了支持，但结果并不支持水温也会显著影响表现的预测。这些结果表明，非空间预训练可以显著提高雌性大鼠在获取隐藏平台的位置策略方面的表现，而与水温无关。
