title: Effects of chronic ethanol consumption associated or not with experimental anterior thalamic lesions on spontaneous sequential alternation in mice.
abstract: Previous studies from our team have shown that a 12 month ethanol administration induced deficits in a sequential alternation task, whereas a 6 month treatment had no effects. We have already shown that the 12 month treatment induced deficits both in diencephalic and hippocampal structures, whereas the 6 month treatment damaged only the mammillary bodies. Thus, the question remained whether or not increasing selectively the diencephalic damage by lesioning the anterior thalamic nuclei would disrupt sequential alternation in 6 month ethanol-treated mice. Results indicate that alcohol-treated mice exhibiting experimental lesions into the anterior thalamus were significantly impaired in the sequential task as compared to both controls or 6 month ethanol-treated mice. In contrast, anterior thalamic lesions in normal (no alcohol treatment) subjects induced no deficits. The relative contribution of the hippocampo-mammillo-thalamic circuitry in sequential alternation is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Comportementales et Cognitives, URA CNRS 339, Université de Bordeaux 1, Talence, France.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Beracochea
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jaffard
mesh_terms: D000344:Afferent Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000818:Animals; D000431:Ethanol / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000187:drug effects / Q000503:physiopathology*; D007051:Ibotenic Acid / Q000633:toxicity; D008326:Mammillary Bodies / Q000187:drug effects / Q000503:physiopathology*; D051379:Mice; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D013788:Thalamus / Q000187:drug effects / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D007051:Ibotenic Acid; D000431:Ethanol