Evidence for Hippocampal Role
in Place Avoidance Other Than Merely Memory Storage
Š. KUBÍK1,2, A. STUCHLÍK1,
A.A. FENTON1,3
1Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the
Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic, 2Institute of
Neuroscience, University of Oregon, Eugene and 3State
University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY,
USA
Received June 26, 2005
Accepted August 5, 2005
On-line available October 17, 2005
Summary
Spatial navigation is used as a popular animal model of higher
cognitive functions in people. The data suggest that the
hippocampus is important for both storing spatial memories and
for performing spatial computations necessary for navigation.
Animals use multiple behavioral strategies to solve spatial
tasks often using multiple memory systems. We investigated how
inactivation of the rat hippocampus affects performance in a
place avoidance task to determine if the role of the hippocampus
in this task could be attributed to memory storage/retrieval or
to the computations needed for navigation. Injecting
tetrodotoxin (TTX) into both hippocampi impaired conditioned
place avoidance, but after injecting only one hippocampus, the
rats learned the place avoidance as well as without any
injections. Retention of the place avoidance learned with one
hippocampus was not impaired when the injection was switched to
the hippocampus that had not been injected during learning. The
result suggests that during learning, the hippocampus did not
store the place avoidance memory.
Key words
Navigation • Multiple memories • Temporary inactivation •
Tetrodotoxin • Rat
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