title: Does pretraining spare the spatial deficit associated with anterior thalamic damage in rats?
abstract: Rats that had been pretrained on 2 tests of allocentric memory (water maze and T maze) received bilateral cytotoxic lesions in the anterior thalamic nuclei (ATN) or transection of the fimbria-fornix (FF). After surgery, both groups of rats were impaired on both tasks, although the preoperative training resulted in a rapid initial reacquisition of the water maze task. Those rats with lesions largely restricted to the ATN were impaired at a level comparable to that produced by FF lesions. This finding is consistent with a close functional relationship between the hippocampus and the ATN, necessary for the acquisition and on-line processing of allocentric spatial information but not for the maintenance/retrieval of procedural information. The rats with more extensive thalamic lesions were more impaired in both tasks and did show a loss of procedural information.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. E.C.Warburton@bristol.ac.uk
authors.forename: E C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Warburton
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Morgan
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Baird
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Muir
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Aggleton
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D020643:Anterior Thalamic Nuclei / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D018690:Excitatory Amino Acid Agonists; D020712:Fornix, Brain / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D016202:N-Methylaspartate; D051381:Rats; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D018690:Excitatory Amino Acid Agonists; D016202:N-Methylaspartate