title: Impaired processing of local geometric features during navigation in a water maze following hippocampal lesions in rats.
abstract: Hippocampal damage impairs navigation with respect to information provided by the shape of an arena. Recent evidence has suggested that normal rats use local geometric information, as opposed to a global geometric representation, to navigate to a correct corner. One implication of this pattern of results is that hippocampal lesions may impair processing of 1 or more of the local geometric features of an environment. The authors therefore investigated the effects of hippocampal cell loss in rats on navigation to a hidden goal with respect to a variety of local cues in an environment with a distinctive shape. Rats with lesions of the hippocampus were impaired in discriminating a right-angled corner from its mirror image. However, they were able to use cues provided by an acute-angled corner (Experiment 1) or a local polarizing cue (Experiment 2). In contrast, lesioned rats were impaired in discriminating long versus short walls (Experiment 3). Results indicate that the hippocampus plays a role in disambiguating locations by processing (metric) information related to the distance between corners.
authors: School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Wales.
authors: Peter M
authors: PM
authors: Jones
authors: John M
authors: JM
authors: Pearce
authors: Vanessa J
authors: VJ
authors: Davies
authors: Mark A
authors: MA
authors: Good
authors: Anthony
authors: A
authors: McGregor
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000473:pathology*; D004777:Environment; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*