Jc. Cassel et al., FIMBRIA-FORNIX VS SELECTIVE HIPPOCAMPAL-LESIONS IN RATS - EFFECTS ON LOCOMOTOR-ACTIVITY AND SPATIAL-LEARNING AND MEMORY, Neurobiology of learning and memory, 69(1), 1998, pp. 22-45
The behavioral effects of interrupting the axons that pass in the fimb
ria and dorsal fornix were compared with the effects of selective remo
val of the cells that comprise the hippocampus with ibotenic acid. Sta
rting 4.5 months after surgery, lesioned and control rats were (i) tra
ined in both the Morris water maze and the eight-arm radial maze using
protocols that placed an emphasis on either working memory (WM) or re
ference memory (RM) and (ii) tested for locomotor activity in the home
cage. In comparison to sham-operated rats, the rats fi om both lesion
groups were impaired in most learning/memory tasks, but there were so
me interesting differences between the two lesioned groups. When compa
red to rats with fimbria-fornix lesions (FIFX rats) hippocampal rats (
HIPP rats) were slower in learning to swim to a visible platform and s
howed a greater impairment than FIFX rats in the radial-maze task when
the testing procedure required the utilization of RM and WM in a more
demanding WM task. In the test of locomotor activity, FIFX and contro
l rats did not differ, but HIPP rats were more active than the rats in
both other groups. The pattern of results obtained after a 4.5-month
recovery period support the following general conclusions. (1) While t
here are some similarities in the effects on behavior of interrupting
the axons in the fimbria-fornix compared to removing the hippocampus,
there are some important differences. (2) From the findings that are a
vailable, a possible explanation to account for the difference between
FIFX and HIPP rats is that the 4.5-month survival time permitted some
recovery in the group of rats with FIFX lesions. (3) While it is well
known that the Morris water maze and the radial-arm maze tasks provid
e useful measures of spatial learning and memory processes, our result
s suggest that the information provided by the two spatial learning ta
sks may differ in important respects. (C) 1998 Academic Press.