title: Deficits across multiple cognitive domains in a subset of aged Fischer 344 rats.
abstract: Rodent models of cognitive aging routinely use spatial performance on the water maze to characterize medial temporal lobe integrity. Water maze performance is dependent upon this system and, as in the aged human population, individual differences in learning abilities are reliably observed among spatially characterized aged rats. However, unlike human aging in which cognitive deficits rarely occur in isolation, few non-spatial learning deficits have been identified in association with spatial impairment among aged rats. In this study, a subset of male aged Fischer 344 rats was impaired both in water maze and odor discrimination tasks, whereas other aged cohorts performed on par with young adult rats in both settings. The odor discrimination learning deficits were reliable across multiple problems. Moreover, these deficits were not a consequence of anosmia and were specific to olfactory learning, as cognitively impaired aged rats performed normally on an analogous non-olfactory discrimination task. These are among the first data to describe an aging model in which individual variability among aged rat cognition occurs across two independent behavioral domains.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4235, United States.
authors.forename: Candi L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: LaSarge
authors.forename: Karienn Souza
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Montgomery
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tucker
authors.forename: G Simona
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Slaton
authors.forename: William H
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Griffith
authors.forename: Barry
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Setlow
authors.forename: Jennifer L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Bizon
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009812:Odorants; D051381:Rats; D011916:Rats, Inbred F344 / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D013649:Taste / Q000502:physiology