Behavioural neuroscienceLesions of the dorsolateral striatum impair the acquisition of a simplified stimulus-response dependent conditional discrimination task
Section snippets
Subjects
Subjects were male Long Evans rats (Charles Rivers, Saint-Constant, Quebec), weighing between 300 and 450g. Rats were housed individually in clear plastic cages, in a room designed to maintain temperature between 20 and 22°C. Animals were maintained on a 12-h light/dark cycle (lights off 08:00–20:00 h). All procedures were carried out in accordance with the Canadian Council on Animal Care and the institutional animal care committee as well as the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care
Histology
A total of seven sham and 12 lesioned animals were used. Three animals in the lesioned group were removed due to damage outside of the dorsolateral striatum. Thus, a total of nine lesioned animals were included in the final analyses. Fig. 1 depicts the extent of damage in lesioned animals, while Fig. 2 depicts photomicrographs of a typical dorsolateral lesion and sham control. Photomicrographs were digitally scanned from original photos and no manipulations were performed.
Response rate during VI training
Fig. 3 depicts
Discussion
Animals with lesions of the dorsolateral striatum showed a substantial deficit in accuracy throughout the course of training. Similar to what was found in our earlier experiments (Featherstone and McDonald, 2004a), animals started off at a low rate of accuracy, and, despite some improvement over the course of training, failed to reach a level of performance comparable to that of sham animals. These results are compatible with the notion that the dorsolateral striatum is necessary for
References (31)
- et al.
Role of the medial and lateral caudate-putamen in mediating an auditory conditional response association
Neurobiol Learn Mem
(2001) - et al.
Skilled motor deficits in rats induced by ventrolateral striatal dopamine depletionsbehavioral and pharmacological characterization
Brain Res
(1996) - et al.
Dissociation of hippocampal and striatal contributions to spatial navigation in the water maze
Neurobiol Learn Mem
(1996) - et al.
Effects of medial and lateral caudate-putamen lesions on place- and cue-guided behaviors in the water mazerelation to thigmotaxis
Behav Brain Res
(1999) - et al.
Dorsal striatum and stimulus-response learninglesions of the dorsolateral, but not dorsomedial, striatum impair acquisition of a stimulus-response-based instrumental discrimination task, while sparing conditioned place preference learning
Neuroscience
(2004) - et al.
Dorsal striatum and stimulus-response learninglesions of the dorsolateral, but not dorsomedial, striatum impair acquisition of a simple discrimination task
Behav Brain Res
(2004) - et al.
The placement of a striatal ibotenic acid lesion affects skilled forelimb use and the direction of drug-induced rotation
Brain Res Bull
(1996) - et al.
Parallel information processing in the water mazeevidence for independent memory systems involving dorsal striatum and hippocampus
Behav Neural Biol
(1994) - et al.
A dissociation of dorso-lateral striatum and amygdala function on the same stimulus-response habit task
Neuroscience
(2004) - et al.
Inactivation of hippocampus or caudate nucleus with lidocaine differentially affects expression of place and response learning
Neurobiol Learn Mem
(1996)