Department of Behavioral Sciences, University of Findlay, Findlay, OH, United States; J.P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind, & Behavior, Bowling Green, OH, United States.
Department of Psychological Science, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, United States.
Behav Brain Res. 2021 Jan 15;397:112948. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112948. Epub 2020 Oct 2.
The relationship between hippocampal aging and spatial-cognitive decline in birds has recently been investigated. However, like its mammalian counterpart, the avian hippocampus does not work in isolation and its relationship to the septum is of particular interest. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of age on septum (medial and lateral) and associated nucleus of the diagonal band (NDB) neuronal activation (as indicated by c-Fos expression) during learning of a spatial, delayed non-match-to-sample task conducted in a modified radial arm maze. The results indicated significantly reduced septum, but not NDB, activation during spatial learning in older pigeons. We also preliminarily investigated the effect of age on the number of cholinergic septum and NDB neurons (as indicated by expression of choline acetyltransferase; ChAT). Although underpowered to reveal a statistical effect, the data suggest that older pigeons have substantially fewer ChAT-expressing cells in the septum compared to younger pigeons. The data support the hypothesis that reduced activation of the septum contributes to the age-related, spatial cognitive impairment in pigeons.
最近研究了鸟类海马体老化与空间认知能力下降之间的关系。然而，与哺乳动物的海马体一样，鸟类的海马体并不是孤立工作的，其与隔区的关系尤其值得关注。本研究旨在探讨在改良的放射臂迷宫中进行空间延迟非匹配样本任务学习时，年龄对隔区（内侧和外侧）和相关斜角带核（NDB）神经元激活（如 c-Fos 表达所示）的影响。结果表明，老年鸽子在空间学习过程中，隔区的激活显著减少，但 NDB 没有。我们还初步研究了年龄对隔区和 NDB 胆碱能神经元数量（如乙酰胆碱转移酶表达所示；ChAT）的影响。尽管没有足够的统计效果，但数据表明，与年轻鸽子相比，老年鸽子的隔区中 ChAT 表达细胞数量明显减少。该数据支持这样一种假设，即隔区激活减少导致鸽子的年龄相关空间认知能力下降。
