The effects of fornix section on win-stay/lose-shift and win-shift/lose-stay performance in the rat.

Two groups of rats were trained in 2-lever operant tasks that required them to follow either a Win-shift/Lose-stay rule, or else a Win-stay/Lose-shift rule. The rats in each testing condition attained a similar level of performance. Once the tasks had been learnt, half of the rats in each testing co...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rawlins, J, Maxwell, T, Sinden, J
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 1988
Description
Summary:Two groups of rats were trained in 2-lever operant tasks that required them to follow either a Win-shift/Lose-stay rule, or else a Win-stay/Lose-shift rule. The rats in each testing condition attained a similar level of performance. Once the tasks had been learnt, half of the rats in each testing condition were given fornix lesions. These lesions produced a clear performance impairment at all inter-response retention intervals tested in those rats trained on the Win-shift/Lose-stay task, but impaired performance in rats trained on the Win-stay/Lose-shift condition only when the inter-response interval reached 10 s. The implications of these results for the working memory theory and for the temporal discontiguity theory are discussed.