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Sexually dimorphic effects of hippocampal cholinergic deafferentation in rats
Author(s) -
Jonasson Zachariah,
Cahill Jonathan F. X.,
Tobey Rachel E.,
Baxter Mark G.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2004.03739.x
Subject(s) - basal forebrain , cholinergic , choline acetyltransferase , cholinergic neuron , hippocampal formation , morris water navigation task , neuroscience , hippocampus , barnes maze , endocrinology , acetylcholinesterase , psychology , water maze , medicine , neurotoxin , biology , spatial learning , biochemistry , enzyme
To determine whether the basal forebrain‐hippocampal cholinergic system supports sexually dimorphic functionality, male and female Long‐Evans rats were given either selective medial septum/vertical limb of the diagonal band (MS/VDB) cholinergic lesions using the neurotoxin 192 IgG‐saporin or a control surgery and then postoperatively tested in a set of standard spatial learning tasks in the Morris water maze. Lesions were highly specific and effective as confirmed by both choline acetyltransferase/parvalbumin immunostaining and acetylcholinesterase histochemistry. Female controls performed worse than male controls in place learning and MS/VDB lesions failed to impair spatial learning in male rats, both consistent with previous findings. In female rats, MS/VDB cholinergic lesions facilitated spatial reference learning. A subsequent test of learning strategy in the water maze revealed a female bias for a response, relative to a spatial, strategy; MS/VDB cholinergic lesions enhanced the use of a spatial strategy in both sexes, but only significantly so in males. Together, these results indicate a sexually dimorphic function associated with MS/VDB‐hippocampal cholinergic inputs. In female rats, these neurons appear to support sex‐specific spatial learning processes.