title: Behavioral effects of experimental portacaval anastomosis measured in Dashiell and radial tunnel maze configurations.
abstract: Male rats which had received either a surgically constructed end-to-side portacaval shunt or sham surgery were maintained on a normal diet of laboratory chow or on chow plus a low tryptophan, low protein supplement. In 6-min long daily tests carried out in both a Dashiell and a radial tunnel maze configuration for 6-day blocks, numerous behavioral parameters were automatically registered via a computer-interfaced maze system. The dietary condition failed to affect the activity level of the two surgical groups. After collapsing the behavioral data across dietary condition, discriminant analysis yielded two significant factors which were subsequently found to differentiate the two surgical groups: the intrasession habituation of locomotion and the total activity within a session. The rate of intrasession activity decline was significantly more rapid for portacaval-shunted rats than their surgical controls, but only in the Dashiell configuration. The control rats exhibited significantly greater total activity during evaluation in the radial maze; whereas in the Dashiell configuration the total activity of the portacaval-shunted rats was higher than controls only during the first few days but lower during the final few days of testing. These results indicate that, depending upon the maze configuration, spontaneous locomotor activity and the decline of activity within a test session were altered in the rat with portal-systemic shunting of the circulation, which has been proposed as an animal model of chronic liver dysfunction.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D004032:Diet; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D011167:Portacaval Shunt, Surgical; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D003313:Zea mays