title: Water maze versus radial maze: differential performance of rats in a spatial delayed match-to-position task and response to scopolamine.
abstract: Studies rarely assess treatment effects across tasks; the present experiments addressed this issue. In Experiments 1 and 2, rats (n=12) were trained and then tested with variable delays on a spatial match-to-position task sequentially in the water and radial mazes (in counterbalanced order). Experiment 1 compared the effect of 0-, 60- and 1440-min delays on performance in both mazes. Rats required fewer (P<0.05) mean (+/-S.E.M.) sessions to reach criterion performance in the water (11.0+/-1.0) versus radial maze (19.3+/-2.2). In test sessions, performance was impaired delay-dependently when scores were averaged across the two tasks (P<0.05) but no significant effect of task or task x delay interaction was found. In the second experiment, the same rats were retrained and tested with 0-, 1-, 3- and 5-min delays in both mazes and testing followed the administration of scopolamine (0, 0.1, 0.4 and 0.8 mg/kg). The mean (+/-S.E.M.) number of acquisition sessions was similar in the radial (6.33+/-0.34) and water maze (6.08+/-0.46). On the sample portion of trials, performance was impaired at the 0.8 mg/kg dose of scopolamine (P<0.02) in the radial maze only. On the recognition portion of trials in the radial maze, the 0.4 and 0.8 mg/kg doses of scopolamine impaired performance whereas in the water maze task the 0.8 mg/kg dose impaired performance. The pattern of results may reflect different natural tendencies of rats to alternate (win-shift) versus not alternate (win-stay) in dry land versus swim tasks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada K7L 3N6. brandik@interchange.ubc.ca
authors.forename: Brandi K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Ormerod
authors.forename: Richard J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Beninger
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005502:Food; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000187:drug effects*; D008568:Memory / Q000187:drug effects; D018727:Muscarinic Antagonists / Q000494:pharmacology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000187:drug effects; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012201:Reward; D012601:Scopolamine / Q000494:pharmacology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000187:drug effects*
chemical_list: D018727:Muscarinic Antagonists; D012601:Scopolamine