title: Rats' short-term memory for brief electrical stimulation of the ventral tegmental area of the brain.
abstract: Short-term memory for brief electrical stimulation of rats' ventral tegmentum was assessed in a delayed conditional discrimination procedure in which trials began with a train of either low- or high-intensity stimulations. After a delay (i.e., retention interval) ranging from 0.01 to 4 sec, a lever was inserted, accompanied by a dim or a bright light. Lever-pressing was rewarded with food on low intensity-dim light and high intensity-bright light trials, but not on low-bright or high-dim trials. Discrimination ratios, based on relative responding on rewarded trials, indicated that subjects were able to remember the electrical stimulations, but that there was sometimes substantial forgetting after the 4-sec retention interval. The implications of these results for an understanding of the stimulus properties of electrical brain stimulation were discussed.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Wilkie
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Druhan
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D012153:Retention, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D013681:Tegmentum Mesencephali / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors