Acquisition and Retention of Active Avoidance Behavior in Previsual Rats

Abstract

The ability of previsual rats to acquire and retain an active avoidance response at intervals ranging from 0 min to 48 hr was examined in five experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that improvement in avoidance responding over trials was a training effect. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that there was no evidence of retention of the avoidance response over retention intervals ranging from 15 min to 48 hr. Testing at intervals of 0-30 min in Experiment 5 indicated that 10-day-old rats could retain the response over intervals ranging from 0-15 min, but not over a 30-min interval. However, even at the very short intervals (5-15 min), there was evidence of a retention deficit. In general, the results suggest that previsual rats have sufficient memory capabilities to acquire an active avoidance response and to retain it over a 15-min interval. However, without intervention, e.g., reactivation, a retention deficit appears almost immediately, and retention loss seems complete within 30 min. This procedure and phenomenon may prove useful in allowing an immediate assessment of variables believed to alleviate retention loss and in eliminating the influence of many extraneous variables that could alter the retention performance of developing animals.

The effect of home cage stimuli on acquisition and retention of an active avoidance response in previsual rats

“…The finding that the groups trained without shavings differed significantly from the control group during the retention test agrees with previous research (Misanin et al, 1985a) which demonstrated that animals trained on a multidirectional AR in the absence of home cage shavings and returned to the nest during a 30-min retention interval show nearly complete retention loss. The present results also support Smith and Spear's (1978) contention that home cage environmental stimuli facilitate learning in preweanling rats.…”

“…Although the groups trained with no shavings (Groups N-N and N-S) did not differ significantly from the control group during training [ts(7)< 1 .O], both groups made significantly fewer ARs than the controls during the test for retention [rs(7)>2.38, p<.05], indicating a significant retention loss in these animals. These results replicate a previous finding indicating that 10-day-old rats trained and tested under "normal" experimental conditions, that is, trained and tested without shavings and returned to the nest during a 30-min retention interval, show little evidence of retention (Misanin et al, 1985a). In contrast, both experimental groups trained with shavings (Groups S-S and S-N) failed to differ from controls during the retention test [ts(7)< 1.21, indicating no retention loss in these animals.…”

“…In contrast, both experimental groups trained with shavings (Groups S-S and S-N) failed to differ from controls during the retention test [ts(7)< 1.21, indicating no retention loss in these animals. Shavings present during training apparently attenuates the typical retention deficit observed in 10-day-old rats given a 30-min retention test (Misanin et al, 1985a).…”

Development switch in neural circuitry underlying odor-malaise learning

“…Indeed, this early malaise odor-avoidance learning is in sharp contrast to the attenuated olfactory fear/avoidance/inhibitory conditioning, as well as lack of fear expression to predator odors seen in neonatal rat pups (Collier and Mast 1979;Haroutunian and Campbell 1979;Blozovski and Cudennec 1980;Stehouwer and Campbell 1980;Bialik et al 1984;Misanin et al 1985;Camp and Rudy 1988;Takahashi 1992;Myslivecek 1997;Sullivan et al 2000;Wiedenmayer and Barr 2001;Sullivan 2003, 2005;. The emergence of these learning abilities and fear to predator odor is coincident with the emergence of amygdala function.…”