Effects of vibrissae removal on search accuracy in the water maze.
In two experiments, the vibrissae were clipped on either the left, the right, or both sides, and the rats were trained to find a submerged platform in the Morris water maze. In both experiments, animals without vibrissae on both sides or on the left consistently spent significantly more time in the "counter" area twice the platform diameter in size, surrounding the submerged platform, than intact controls. Counter preference was not as consistent across experiments in rats with right vibrissae removed. These results suggest that the vibrissae are required for proprioceptive location of the platform itself, but not for proximal search accuracy. Since ischemic damage to hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells has also been reported to prolong counter search during training, the results support the suggestion that impaired hippocampal processing of proprioceptive information from the vibrissae may contribute to the increased latency to find the platform shown by ischemic rats.
Grigoryan
G
G
Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. ggrigoryan@ihna.ru
Hodges
l H
lH
Gray
J
J
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000502:physiology; D007839:Functional Laterality; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012683:Sensory Deprivation / Q000502:physiology*; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014738:Vibrissae / Q000294:innervation / Q000502:physiology*