BRIEF PARADOXICAL SLEEP-DEPRIVATION IMPAIRS REFERENCE, BUT NOT WORKING, MEMORY IN THE RADIAL-ARM MAZE TASK

Selective deprivation of paradoxical sleep after learning results in m emory deficits in a variety of tasks. The present experiment was desig ned to examine the effects of paradoxical sleep deprivation (PSD) upon spatial working and reference memory. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained for 10 days in an eight-arm radial maze. Food rewards wer e available in four of the arms, while the other four arms were never baited. After each daily training session, different groups of rats we re given 4 h of PSD, beginning either immediately, 4 h, or 8 h after t he training experience. An additional group received PSD during the pe riod 13-24 h following daily training. The group that received PSD for 4 h immediately following daily training showed significant impairmen t compared to the other groups, but the deficit was limited to the ref erence component of the task. This result suggests that PSD causes def icits only in long-term forms of spatial memory. (C) 1998 Academic Pre ss.