Sarter M, Burk JA, Graf A, Russell J, Bruno JP (2001) Basal forebrain cholinergic and gabaergic neurons mediate different aspects of sustained attention performance in rats. Neuroscience 2001 Abstracts 313.7. Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA.
Summary: Several studies have demonstrated that lesions of basal forebrain (BF) corticopetal cholinergic neurons, produced by infusing the cholinotoxin 192IgG-saporin, impair the ability to detect visual signals in an operant sustained attention task but not to reject nonsignals. Information about the functions of BF non-cholinergic, particularly GABAergic neurons has remained scarce. As infusions of the excitotoxic amino acid ibotenic acid (IBO) are known to predominantly destroy non-cholinergic neurons in the BF, the effects of BF IBO lesions on sustained attention performance were assessed. Rats were trained to perform a sustained attention task and then received bilateral infusions of IBO (0.06 M; 0.5 μL / hemisphere) or of saline (N=8 /group) into the basal forebrain. Postsurgically, rats were trained to stable performance on the sustained attention task. Compared to controls, ibotenic acid-lesioned rats more frequently responded to non-signal events by ‘claiming’ a hit, and they exhibited an increase in hits in response to the briefest signals. Immunohistological analyses confirmed the predominant loss of parvalbumin-positive and thus presumably GABAergic neurons in the BF, while ChAT-positive neurons were partially spared. Likewise, IBO-lesioned animals exhibited an only moderate decrease in cortical AChE-positive fiber density. These and additional findings indicate that BF GABAergic neurons contribute to attentional performance by mediating the animals’ ability to switch between the response-rules for signals and non-signals.
Related Products: 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01)