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Rats can learn a “Delayed Match / Delayed Non‐Match to Sample” task using only taste stimuli
Author(s) -
Grobe Connie L,
Spector Alan C
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.20.4.a381
Subject(s) - taste , stimulus (psychology) , taste aversion , psychology , reinforcement , audiology , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , medicine , social psychology
The conditioned taste aversion (CTA) procedure is the only method currently used to examine memory in the gustatory system. The specialized nature of CTA poses some limitations in modeling memory processes in a comprehensive fashion. We evaluated a novel procedure designed to assess the properties of taste‐based working memory. Adult Sprague‐Dawley rats on a water‐restriction schedule were trained to first sample a taste stimulus from a spout in a specialized gustometer, then to sample a second taste stimulus that was either identical to or different from the first. Rats received a water reinforcer for correctly reporting whether the two stimuli were the “same” or “different” by responding on one of two fixed response spouts; incorrect responses were punished with a time out. With presentation of the two samples separated by 6 s, rats were able to reliably respond at above chance levels to all combinations of the two taste stimuli (0.1 M NaCl and 0.1 M sucrose), but were only able, on average, to reach asymptotic performance of about 74%. This behavioral paradigm shows promise for the study of working memory with taste cues. (Supported by NIH grants F31‐DC007301 [CLG] and R01‐DC01628 [ACS]).