The pretectal region of the rat participates in the regulation of goal-directed behaviour.
Two groups of each 6 male hooded rats with bilateral symmetrical lesions in the anterior dorsolateral tegmentum including parts of the anterior and posterior pretectal nuclei and two sham-operated control groups were compared in different avoidance paradigms. The acquisition of conditioned avoidance responses (CAR) in a Y-maze was significantly retarded in lesioned rats and remained definitely on a lower performance level. Their reaction times (RTs) were significantly prolonged. Brightness discrimination was severely impaired. They had evidently troubles to correct their erroneous runs. After preoperative training lesioned rats had no retention deficit in the Y-maze performance, neither different RTs nor changes of running speed, but a deficit in brightness discrimination. Postoperative acquisition of CAR in a jump test was impossible. Retention of preoperatively learnt CAR in the jump test was zero, relearning was impossible reaching not more than 40% CAR performance after 8 sessions. The behavioural syndrome was different from other tegmental lesion types. Impaired brightness discrimination and vertical visual orientation are main symptoms of the more complex disturbance of goal-directed behaviour.
Mager
P
P
Mager
R
R
Klingberg
F
F
D000818:Animals; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000502:physiology; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D013681:Tegmentum Mesencephali / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology