van Gool W A, Mirmiran M, van Haaren F
Behav Neural Biol. 1985 Nov;44(3):454-69. doi: 10.1016/s0163-1047(85)90880-5.
The effects of aging and of housing in an enriched environment on performance in an 8-arm radial maze were evaluated in young adult (7-8 months) and old (30-33 months) male Brown-Norway rats, using a procedure in which the rats were confined for 8 s to the central platform of the maze between consecutive choices. Although the old rats attained a level of performance which was clearly above change, they were shown to perform worse than the young rats. No performance differences were found between differentially housed rats of the same age group. In a second experiment recovery cycles of visual evoked potentials were determined in the same rats by using paired flashes with an interstimulus time of 400, 300, 200, or 100 ms. Recovery was consistently smaller in the old rats as compared to the young ones. No correlation could be demonstrated, however, between radial maze performance or housing condition and recovery functions of the visual evoked potentials. This finding indicates that a decline in visual sensitivity cannot readily explain the impaired radial maze performance of old rats. Evidence which suggests that age-related hippocampal changes play a major role in the radial maze performance deficit is discussed.
在年轻成年（7 - 8个月）和老年（30 - 33个月）雄性布朗 - 挪威大鼠中，使用一种程序评估衰老和饲养在丰富环境中对八臂放射状迷宫表现的影响，该程序中大鼠在连续选择之间被限制在迷宫的中央平台8秒。尽管老年大鼠达到了明显高于随机水平的表现，但它们的表现仍比年轻大鼠差。在同一年龄组不同饲养条件的大鼠之间未发现表现差异。在第二个实验中，通过使用间隔时间为400、300、200或100毫秒的成对闪光，测定了相同大鼠视觉诱发电位的恢复周期。与年轻大鼠相比，老年大鼠的恢复始终较小。然而，在放射状迷宫表现或饲养条件与视觉诱发电位的恢复功能之间未发现相关性。这一发现表明，视觉敏感性的下降不能轻易解释老年大鼠放射状迷宫表现受损的原因。文中讨论了表明与年龄相关的海马变化在放射状迷宫表现缺陷中起主要作用的证据。
