title: Intracranial self-stimulation also facilitates learning in a visual discrimination task in the Morris water maze in rats.
abstract: Intracranial self-Stimulation (ICSS) of the medial forebrain bundle is a treatment capable of consistently facilitating acquisition of learning and memory in a wide array of experimental paradigms in rats. However, the evidence supporting this effect on implicit memory comes mainly from classical conditioning and avoidance tasks. The present work aims to determine whether ICSS would also improve the performance of rats in another type of implicit task such as cued simultaneous visual discrimination in the Morris Water Maze. The ICSS treatment was administered immediately after each of the five acquisition sessions and its effects on retention and reversal were evaluated 72h later. Results showed that ICSS subjects committed fewer errors than Sham subjects and adopted more accurate trajectories during the acquisition of the task. This improvement was maintained until the probe test at 72h. However, ICSS animals experienced more difficulties than the Sham group during the reversal of the same learning, reflecting an impairment in cognitive flexibility. We conclude that post-training ICSS could also be an effective treatment for improving implicit visual discrimination learning and memory.
authors.affiliation: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament de Psicobiologia i de Metodologia de les Ciències de la Salut, Institut de Neurociències, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Soleil
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: García-Brito
authors.affiliation: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament de Psicobiologia i de Metodologia de les Ciències de la Salut, Institut de Neurociències, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Ignacio
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Morgado-Bernal
authors.affiliation: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament de Psicobiologia i de Metodologia de les Ciències de la Salut, Institut de Neurociències, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Neus
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Biosca-Simon
authors.affiliation: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament de Psicobiologia i de Metodologia de les Ciències de la Salut, Institut de Neurociències, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: pilar.segura@uab.cat.
authors.forename: Pilar
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Segura-Torres
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012653:Self Stimulation / Q000502:physiology*; D013550:Swimming; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Deep brain stimulation; Intracranial self-stimulation; Medial forebrain bundle; Memory enhancement; Morris water maze; Simultaneous visual discrimination