Bahník Štěpán, Stuchlík Aleš
Department of Neurophysiology of Memory, Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic , Prague , Czech Republic ; Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg , Würzburg , Germany.
Department of Neurophysiology of Memory, Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic , Prague , Czech Republic.
PeerJ. 2015 Sep 22;3:e1257. doi: 10.7717/peerj.1257. eCollection 2015.
The active place avoidance task is a dry-arena task used to assess spatial navigation and memory in rodents. In this task, a subject is put on a rotating circular arena and avoids an invisible sector that is stable in relation to the room. Rotation of the arena means that the subject's avoidance must be active, otherwise the subject will be moved in the to-be-avoided sector by the rotation of the arena and a slight electric shock will be administered. The present experiment explored the effect of variable arena rotation speed on the ability to avoid the to-be-avoided sector. Subjects in a group with variable arena rotation speed learned to avoid the sector with the same speed and attained the same avoidance ability as rats in a group with a stable arena rotation speed. Only a slight difference in preferred position within the room was found between the two groups. No difference was found between the two groups in the dark phase, where subjects could not use orientation cues in the room. Only one rat was able to learn the avoidance of the to-be-avoided sector in this phase. The results of the experiment suggest that idiothetic orientation and interval timing are not crucial for learning avoidance of the to-be-avoided sector. However, idiothetic orientation might be sufficient for avoiding the sector in the dark.
主动位置回避任务是一种用于评估啮齿动物空间导航和记忆能力的干地实验任务。在该任务中，将实验对象放置在一个旋转的圆形场地中，让其避开相对于房间固定的一个不可见区域。场地的旋转意味着实验对象的回避必须是主动的，否则实验对象会因场地旋转而被移动到待回避区域，并会受到轻微电击。本实验探究了场地可变旋转速度对回避待回避区域能力的影响。可变场地旋转速度组的实验对象学会了以相同速度避开该区域，并且与场地稳定旋转速度组的大鼠具有相同的回避能力。两组之间仅在房间内的偏好位置上发现了细微差异。在黑暗阶段，两组之间未发现差异，此时实验对象无法利用房间内的定向线索。在这个阶段，只有一只大鼠能够学会回避待回避区域。实验结果表明，自身定向和间隔计时对于学习回避待回避区域并非至关重要。然而，自身定向可能足以在黑暗中避开该区域。
