Castro C A, Tracy M, Rudy J W
Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder 30809-0345.
Behav Brain Res. 1989 Apr 1;32(3):255-64. doi: 10.1016/s0166-4328(89)80058-0.
Previously undernourished and well-nourished control rats 23, 30, 40, and 90 days old were compared in a win-shift version of a conditional-spatial discrimination task. Control animals at each age were able to reach criterion on this problem. In contrast, the underfed rats were unable to solve this problem until they were at least 40 days old. The short-term memory of the 40- and 90-day-olds was further evaluated by increasing the interval between the forced run and choice run to 30, 60, and 180 s. Control animals could bridge all intervals; however, the undernourished animals' performance fell to chance when the interval was only 60 s. Thus, early-life undernutrition severely impaired the development of the ability of animals to solve spatial-conditional discrimination tasks and permanently impaired their short-term memory capacity. A simple threshold model relating undernutrition, brain development, and behavior is proposed to account for these data.
将先前营养不良和营养良好的23日龄、30日龄、40日龄和90日龄对照大鼠在条件性空间辨别任务的赢移版本中进行比较。每个年龄的对照动物都能在这个问题上达到标准。相比之下，营养不良的大鼠直到至少40日龄才能解决这个问题。通过将强制奔跑和选择奔跑之间的间隔增加到30秒、60秒和180秒，进一步评估了40日龄和90日龄大鼠的短期记忆。对照动物能够跨越所有间隔；然而，当间隔仅为60秒时，营养不良动物的表现就变得随机。因此，早期营养不良严重损害了动物解决空间条件辨别任务的能力的发展，并永久性地损害了它们的短期记忆能力。提出了一个简单的阈值模型，将营养不良、大脑发育和行为联系起来，以解释这些数据。
