Jackson O, Firoz EF, Janisiewicz AM, Baxter MG (2001) Environment-spatial conditional learning: Contribution of medial septal cholinergic neurons. Neuroscience 2001 Abstracts 314.15. Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA.
Summary: Visual-spatial conditional discrimination learning is impaired by damage to the cholinergic septohippocampal neurons in marmoset monkeys (Ridley et al., 1999). We sought to explore the generality of this finding by testing rats with selective lesions of cholinergic septohippocampal projections (made with 192 IgG-saporin) on an environment-spatial conditional discrimination task. In this task, one of two sets of local environmental cues (consisting of a unique geometric shape with unique visual stimuli) directed search to a particular goal location in the environment (selected from eight possible locations). Preliminary observations suggest that rats with selective lesions of medial septal cholinergic neurons are impaired on acquiring this conditional discrimination task, but are unimpaired on acquiring a single discrimination problem using the same cues. This finding is consistent with a general role for septohippocampal cholinergic projections in the learning of conditional discrimination problems, suggesting that medial septal cholinergic neurons subserve cognitive functions other than decremental attentional processing (Baxter et al., 1997, 1999).
Related Products: 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01)