Effects of emotional reactivity on inhibitory avoidance in the elevated T-maze

Autor: C. Conde, V. Costa, C. Tomaz
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2000
Předmět:
Zdroj: Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research, Vol 33, Iss 2, Pp 233-236 (2000)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 0100-879X
1414-431X
DOI: 10.1590/S0100-879X2000000200012
Popis: The possibility of the presence of inter-individual emotional differences and the memory performance of rats was examined in the elevated T-maze. Two kinds of aversively motivated behaviors, inhibitory avoidance and escape learning, were measured. Based on the number of trials to achieve a learning criterion, rats were divided into two subgroups with either low or high avoidance reactivity (LAR or HAR, respectively). Retention test avoidance latencies showed that HAR animals had better avoidance memory (Mann-Whitney rank sum test, P = 0.0035). No such differences were found for the escape component of this test. These data suggest that individual emotional differences affect inhibitory avoidance performance, which may help to explain the dispersion of the data observed in other studies using this paradigm.
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