Auditory cues support place navigation in rats when associated with a visual cue

Rats, like other crepuscular animals, have excellent auditory capacities an d they discriminate well between different sounds [Heffner HE, Heffner RS, Hearing in two cricetid rodents: wood rats (Neotoma floridana) and grasshop per mouse (Onychomys leucogaster). J Comp Psychol 1985;99(3):275-88]. Howev er, most experimental literature concerning spatial orientation almost excl usively emphasizes the use of visual landmarks [Cressant A, Muller RU, Pouc et B. Failure of centrally placed objects to control the firing fields of h ippocampal place cells. J Neurosci 1997;17(7):2531-42; and Goodridge JP, Ta ube JS. Preferential use of the landmark navigational system by head direct ion cells in rats. Behav Neurosci 1995;109(1):49-61]. To address the import ant issue of whether rats are able to achieve a place navigation task relat ive to auditory beacons, we designed a place learning task in the water maz e. We controlled cue availability by conducting the experiment in total dar kness. Three auditory cues did not allow place navigation whereas three vis ual cues in the same positions did support place navigation. One auditory b eacon directly associated with the goal location did not support taxon navi gation (a beacon strategy allowing the animal to find the goal just by swim ming toward the cue). Replacing the auditory beacons by one single visual b eacon did support taxon navigation. A multimodal configuration of two audit ory cues and one visual cue allowed correct place navigation. The deletion of the two auditory or of the one visual cue did disrupt the spatial perfor mance. Thus rats can combine information from different sensory modalities to achieve a place navigation task. In particular, auditory cues support pl ace navigation when associated with a visual one. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.