title: Dissociating effects of acute photic stress on spatial, episodic-like and working memory in the rat.
abstract: Adaptively responding to acute stress has been of great importance for human and animal survival. However, for our species, stress-related disorders are putting an ever-increasing burden on healthcare systems. It is thus crucial to understand the basic processes and cognitive changes associated with acute stress. Here, we examined the effects of acute stress exposure on spatial (water maze) and memory (delayed match to sample and episodic-memory-like tasks) performance. We found striking performance deficits in stressed animals navigating in the water maze. We also found, in an episodic-like memory task, striking object-location deficits, but not in temporal-object association learning in stressed animals. Finally, no differences were apparent for any delay periods (up to 30s) in a delayed match to sample task. Taken together, these results show a strong differential effect of acute stress on differing memory processes.
authors.affiliation: Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. Electronic address: passeckj@tcd.ie.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Passecker
authors.affiliation: Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
authors.forename: Sally
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Barlow
authors.affiliation: Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
authors.forename: Shane M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: O'Mara
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000009:adverse effects; D011897:Random Allocation; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D065852:Spatial Memory; D013315:Stress, Psychological
keywords: Acute stress; DMTS; Episodic memory; Reference memory; Spatial memory; Water maze