title: Use of the Pyrithiamine-Induced Thiamine Deficient Animal Model of Korsakoff's Syndrome for Exploratory Research Activities in Undergraduate Physiological Psychology.
abstract: Undergraduate neuroscience laboratory activities frequently focus on exercises that build student's wet/dry laboratory skills, foster critical thinking, and provide opportunities for hands-on experiences. Such activities are, without a doubt, extremely important, but sometimes fall short of modeling actual research and often lack the 'unknown' hypothetical nature accompanying empirical studies. In this article we report a series of research activities using an animal model of Korsakoff's syndrome in a Physiological Psychology course. The activities involve testing hypotheses regarding performance of animals with experimentally-induced Korsakoff's syndrome and the effectiveness of glucose as a memory-enhancer in this model. Students were given a set of 24 articles for use in answering a series of laboratory report questions regarding the activities. At the conclusion of the course, students were asked to complete a questionnaire designed to assess the effectiveness of the laboratory activities. Results of the laboratory exercises indicated that locomotor activity, environmental habituation, and anxiety were unaffected in the Korsakoff condition, and glucose had no effect. Results of performance in the T-maze indicated that Korsakoff animals had significantly fewer spontaneous alternations than controls, but Korsakoff animals given glucose did not reveal this difference. Results of the student assessments indicated that the activities were considered educational, challenging, and more interesting than standard laboratory activities designed to reproduce reliable phenomena.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY 12203-1490.
authors.forename: Robert W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Flint
authors.forename: Jonathan E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Hill
authors.forename: Leslie A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Sandusky
authors.forename: Christina L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Marino
keywords: Korsakoff’s syndrome; animal model; behavioral neuroscience; environmental habituation; exploratory research; glucose; laboratory activity; locomotor activity; physiological psychology; rats; spatial working memory; thiamine deficiency