Aggleton J P, Hunt P R, Rawlins J N
Behav Brain Res. 1986 Feb;19(2):133-46. doi: 10.1016/0166-4328(86)90011-2.
A series of experiments examined the proposal that the primary effect of hippocampal damage in rats is to disrupt working memory. Although extensive hippocampal lesions produced a severe impairment in forced-choice alternation--a test of spatial working memory--the same lesions did not impair the acquisition of a non-spatial test of working memory--delayed non-matching-to-sample. This test of object recognition required the rats to select that arm in a Y-maze which contained unfamiliar stimuli. Rats with hippocampal lesions were able to learn and perform this task at normal rates, even with retention delays of as long as 60 s. Two additional experiments helped confirm that the animals had indeed learnt a non-spatial test of working memory. The final experiment examined whether hippocampal lesions resulted in an increased sensitivity to proactive interference. It was found that repetition of test stimuli within a session, which increased interference, did attenuate recognition performance but there was no evidence that the animals with hippocampal lesions were differentially affected.
一系列实验检验了这样一种观点，即大鼠海马体损伤的主要影响是破坏工作记忆。尽管广泛的海马体损伤在强迫选择交替任务（一种空间工作记忆测试）中导致了严重的损伤，但同样的损伤并未损害非空间工作记忆测试——延迟非匹配样本任务的习得。这种物体识别测试要求大鼠在Y型迷宫中选择包含不熟悉刺激的那一侧臂。即使有长达60秒的延迟，海马体损伤的大鼠也能够以正常速度学习并完成这项任务。另外两个实验有助于证实这些动物确实学会了非空间工作记忆测试。最后一个实验研究了海马体损伤是否会导致对前摄干扰的敏感性增加。结果发现，在一个实验环节中重复测试刺激会增加干扰，确实会削弱识别表现，但没有证据表明海马体损伤的动物受到了不同的影响。
