Furukawa S, Iwasaki T
Institute of Psychology, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki.
Shinrigaku Kenkyu. 1989 Aug;60(3):192-5. doi: 10.4992/jjpsy.60.192.
The present study was designed to investigate the possible deficits in the place learning on the 8-arm radial maze in aged rats. In this task, reward was given in the 4 predetermined arms. Aged rats (27 months old, N = 7) acquired this task more slowly than young rats (12 months old, N = 11), and didn't reach to the performance level of the young rats within 80 training trials. Analysis of error choices revealed that the aged animals first entered in the unbaited arms more often than the young rats, whereas there was no difference in the number of re-entered choices to the baited and unbaited arms between the aged and young animals. Therefore, it was concluded that learning deficits in aged rats were attributed to deficits in the reference memory but not in the working memory.
本研究旨在调查老年大鼠在八臂放射状迷宫中位置学习可能存在的缺陷。在此任务中，奖励设置在4个预先确定的臂中。老年大鼠（27月龄，N = 7）比年轻大鼠（12月龄，N = 11）学习此任务的速度更慢，并且在80次训练试验内未达到年轻大鼠的表现水平。对错误选择的分析表明，老年动物比年轻大鼠更频繁地首先进入无诱饵的臂，而老年和年轻动物重新进入有诱饵和无诱饵臂的选择次数没有差异。因此，得出结论，老年大鼠的学习缺陷归因于参考记忆缺陷而非工作记忆缺陷。
