Extracellular level of basolateral amygdalar dopamine responding to reversal of appetitive-conditioned discrimination in young and old rats.
Young and old rats, aged 3 and 24 months old, respectively, were conditioned to press a lever under lamp-on conditions for reward acquisition and lamp-off for no reward using a variable interval reinforcement schedule that averaged 15 s; i.e., the minimal requirement was 4 responses/min. Over a 30-day period, young and old groups showed increased response to lamp-on from 22 to 35/min and from 10 to 23/min, respectively, and shortened response to lamp-off after initial training. Response to lamp-on as a percentage of total response to lamp-on and -off (the discrimination ratio) was over 80%. For the next 30 days, reversal learning was imposed to reinforce discrimination of the lamp-off state. Young rats showed a steadily increasing discrimination ratio from 40% to 70%, and old rats from 30% to 60%. In comparison with the initial training, young rats showed a total response increase from 50% to 60%, while old rats showed an approximately 5% decrease without loss of reward-obtaining efficiency. In vivo microdialysis during reversal revealed that young rats had higher dopamine transmission in the basolateral amygdala than old rats. The dopamine level was positively correlated with the number of responses to state of reward in young rats and negatively with the numbers of both NRF and RF responses to lamp-on and -off states in old rats. These results suggest that in reversal discrimination, basolateral amygdalar dopamine efflux correlates with the manner of age-related conditioned response rather than the ability to learn.
Nomura
Masahiko
M
Department of Physiology, Saitama Medical School, Saitama 350-0495, Japan.
Izaki
Yoshinori
Y
Takita
Masatoshi
M
Tanaka
Junichi
J
Hori
Koji
K
D000367:Age Factors; D000679:Amygdala / Q000378:metabolism*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D004298:Dopamine / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism*; D045604:Extracellular Fluid / Q000378:metabolism; D008297:Male; D017551:Microdialysis; D051381:Rats; D011916:Rats, Inbred F344; D012055:Reinforcement Schedule; D012193:Reversal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D012201:Reward
D004298:Dopamine