Chronic stress leaves novelty-seeking behavior intact while impairing spatial recognition memory in the Y-maze.
This experiment examined whether chronic stress disrupts novelty-seeking behavior under conditions that impair spatial memory. Rats were restrained for 6 h per day for 21 days, then tested in either a traditional spatial recognition Y-maze that requires extra-maze spatial cues to navigate or a version with salient intra-maze cues in addition to the extra-maze spatial cues. As previously shown, chronic restraint stress impaired performance on the spatial version of the Y-maze. However, chronically stressed rats performed well in the intra-maze cue version. The results indicate that the deficits in Y-maze performance following chronic stress are not attributed to neophobia, but likely reflect neurochemical and/or neurobiological changes underlying spatial memory ability.
Wright
Ryan L
RL
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe 85287-1104, USA. ryanlwright@hotmail.com
Conrad
Cheryl D
CD
D000818:Animals; D003463:Cues; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012149:Restraint, Physical; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*