title: Acquisition of avoidance reaction in rats with different social experience in youth.
abstract: The acquisition of both active and passive avoidance response, the extinction of the former and the retention of the long-term memory trace of the latter were studied in 30- and 90-day-old male rats of the Wistar strain. The rats were in 3 groups which had had a different history between 15 and 30 days of age: (1) normally weaned rats lived from birth in a cage together with mother and siblings, i.e. under usual laboratory breeding conditions; (2) prematurely weaned rats lived under the same conditions for the first 15 days; after this period, their mother was removed from the cage; (3) community-reared rats had the same history up to 15 days of age; then they began to live in a community (5 connected cages) in contact with both young and adult rats from other cages. Ninety- day-old male rats acquired an active avoidance response at the same rate irrespective of their history in youth but 30-day-old rats were relatively slower if they had been prematurely weaned. Among both normally and prematurely weaned 30-day-old rats, the extinction was slower than in community-reared rats of the same age. Passive avoidance response was acquired by all rats at the same rate irrespective of their history and age. The long- term memory trace was always more stable in adult rats than in young ones.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physiology, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Klicperová
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Nováková