Moye T B, Vanderryn J
Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Denver 80202.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 1988;95(3):401-6. doi: 10.1007/BF00181956.
Previous research has shown that 15-day-old rats are quite poor at associating temporally separated events. However, by 17 days of age, this capability has improved substantially (Moye and Rudy 1987a). In the present study, the centrally active anticholinesterase physostigmine was found to enhance the ability of 15-day-olds to associate a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) with a shock unconditioned stimulus (US) when these events were separated by a 10-s trace interval. In effect, the drug produced trace conditioning performance similar to that observed in older animals. We suggest that performance in the trace conditioning task requires the development of associative memory processes that allow the young rat to retain a representation of a CS over time. Furthermore, the enhancement of trace conditioning by physostigmine indicates that central cholinergic maturation is an important factor in the expression of associative memory.
先前的研究表明，15日龄的大鼠在关联时间上分开的事件方面表现相当差。然而，到17日龄时，这种能力有了显著提高（莫耶和鲁迪，1987a）。在本研究中，发现中枢活性抗胆碱酯酶毒扁豆碱可增强15日龄大鼠在这些事件被10秒痕迹间隔分开时，将音调条件刺激（CS）与电击非条件刺激（US）相关联的能力。实际上，该药物产生的痕迹条件反射表现类似于在年长动物中观察到的情况。我们认为，痕迹条件反射任务中的表现需要发展联想记忆过程，使幼鼠能够随着时间保留CS的表征。此外，毒扁豆碱对痕迹条件反射的增强表明，中枢胆碱能成熟是联想记忆表达的一个重要因素。
