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Environment‐spatial conditional learning in rats with selective lesions of medial septal cholinergic neurons
Author(s) -
Janisiewicz Agnieszka M.,
Jackson Orville,
Firoz Elnaz F.,
Baxter Mark G.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
hippocampus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.767
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1098-1063
pISSN - 1050-9631
DOI - 10.1002/hipo.10175
Subject(s) - neuroscience , cholinergic , hippocampal formation , hippocampus , cholinergic neuron , diagonal band of broca , psychology , spatial memory , associative learning , working memory , cognition
Cholinergic medial septal neurons may regulate several aspects of hippocampal function, including place field stability and spatial working memory. Monkeys with damage to septal cholinergic neurons are impaired in visual‐spatial conditional learning tasks; however, this candidate function of septal cholinergic neurons has not been studied extensively in the rat. In the present study, rats with selective lesions of cholinergic neurons in the medial septum and vertical limb of the diagonal band of Broca (MS/VDB), made with 192 IgG‐saporin, were tested on a conditional associative learning task. In this task, which we term “environment‐spatial” conditional learning, the correct location of a spatial response depended on the array of local environmental cues. MS/VDB‐lesioned rats were impaired when the two parts of the conditional problem were presented concurrently, but not when one environment had been learned before the full conditional problem was presented. Our findings suggest that cholinergic MS/VDB neurons participate in some aspects of conditional associative learning in rats. They may also shed light on the involvement of cholinergic projections to the hippocampus in modulating and remodeling hippocampal spatial representations. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.