Memory for brief, widely spaced odor presentations in the rat.
Rats trained on a series of 16 novel 2-odor discrimination tasks using a 10-s intertrial interval (ITI) rapidly improved in performance and made only 0-3 errors by the end of the test series. They were then tested on other novel pairs of odors, but with a 10- and a 30-min interval between trials. There was no decrement in performance accuracy in the longer ITI tests and, in most cases, criterion performance was achieved after making zero or 1 error after the first (information) trial. These results demonstrate that rats have the capacity to remember for at least 30 min whether a single brief presentation of a novel odor was followed by a reward.
Lovelace
C T
CT
Department of Psychology, American University, Washington, DC 20016, USA.
Slotnick
B M
BM
D000818:Animals; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009812:Odorants; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D012903:Smell