Illness-induced context aversion learning in rats with lesions of the dorsal hippocampus.
In 2 experiments, rats with electrolytic lesions of the dorsal hippocampus and sham-operated control subjects were given injections of lithium chloride after exposure to a distinctive context. This procedure establishes a context-illness association in intact subjects. In Experiment 1, the strength of the context aversion was assessed by measuring the subjects' willingness to consume a novel flavor in the context. It was found that lesioned subjects showed less suppression of consumption than controls. Experiment 2 tested the ability of the context to block subsequent flavor-aversion learning and revealed less effective blocking in lesioned rats. These results are consistent with the view that hippocampal lesions retard context conditioning; unlike previous work that has made use of conditioned freezing as the measure of context conditioning, the present results are not explicable in terms of lesion-induced changes in general activity.
Aguado
L
L
Department of Psychology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.
Hall
G
G
Harrington
N
N
Symonds
M
M
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D005508:Food Deprivation; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery; D018021:Lithium Chloride / Q000494:pharmacology; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D051381:Rats
D018021:Lithium Chloride