 |
| Research article summary (published 29 Apr 2009): |
Long-term deficits on a foraging task after bilateral vestibular deafferentation in rats.
Full Abstract
Animal studies have shown that bilateral vestibular deafferentation (BVD) causes deficits in spatial memory that may be related to electrophysiological and neurochemical changes in the hippocampus. Recently, human studies have also indicated that human patients can exhibit spatial memory impairment and hippocampal atrophy even 8-10 yr following BVD. Our previous studies have shown that rats with unilateral vestibular deafferentation (UVD) showed an impairment at 3 months after the surgery on a food foraging task that relies on hippocampal integration of egocentric cues, such as vestibular information; however, by 6 months postop, they showed a recovery of function. By contrast, the long-term effects of BVD on spatial navigation have never been well studied. In this study, we tested BVD or sham rats on a food foraging task at 5 months postop. Under light conditions, BVD rats were able to use visual cues to guide themselves home, but did so with a significantly longer homing time. However, in darkness, BVD rats were severely impaired in the foraging task, as indicated by a significantly longer homing distance and homing time, with more errors and larger heading angles when compared with sham rats. These results suggest that, unlike UVD, BVD causes long-term deficits in spatial navigation that are unlikely to recover, even with repeated T-maze training. Copyright 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Author information
Author/s: Zheng, Yiwen (Y); Goddard, Matthew (M); Darlington, Cynthia L (CL); Smith, Paul F (PF);
Affiliation: Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, School of Medical Sciences, University of Otago Medical School, Dunedin, New Zealand. yiwen.zheng(-atsign-)stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Journal: Hippocampus (Hippocampus), published in United States. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2009-May; vol 19 (issue 5) : pp 480-6
Dates: Created 2009/04/20; Completed 2009/06/08;
PMID: 19072773, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/8/2009, IMS Date: 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):
Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.
This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.
MeSH headings (categories)
This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.
Related articles
This article has not been indexed for related articles as yet, however you can still use the live related article search links below.
See a large map of 100+ related articles.