Sarter M, Turchi J, Gonzalez K (1999) Effects of cortical cholinergic deafferentation upon processing capacity as assessed by an olfactory span task in rats. Neuroscience 1999 Abstracts 554.6. Society for Neuroscience, Miami, FL.
Summary: Cortical cholinergic deafferentation, produced by infusions of 192 IgG-saporin into the basal forebrain of rats, results in impairments of processing capacity as measured by performance in a divided attention task (Turchi & Sarter, 1997). In the present experiment, processing capacity was assessed in rats by employing two versions of an olfactory span task (adapted from Dudchenko, Wood, Faherty & Eichenbaum 1998): match-to-sample (MTS) and non-match-to-sample (NMTS) olfactory discrimination paradigms involving multiple spices (dill, clove, etc.) as stimuli. Subjects for the MTS group were initially trained to select the sample-spice whereas subjects for the NMTS group were trained to identify the novel spice presented together with the sample-spice. After animals acquired the matching and non-matching rules, a steadily increasing number of spices were presented in randomized sequence configurations for successive trials within a daily test session, and the olfactory span of the animal was defined as the number of correct responses generated before the first error. Once the rats attained a stable performance criterion (average pre-lesion span: 16.4 ± 0.2), animals received basal forebrain infusions of 192 IgG-saporin. The results indicate that the lesion impaired NMTS rats performance following an intertrial delay insertion between trials. This experiment provides additional evidence implicating the cholinergic system in the mediation of processing capacity. Supported by NIH Grants NS32938, NS37026 and AG10173.
Related Products: 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01)