Modern Psychological Studies
Periodical Title
Modern Psychological Studies
Volume
3
Number
2
Page Numbers
pages 16-20
Publisher
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Place of Publication
Chattanooga (Tenn.)
Date
1995
Abstract
Past research has demonstrated that Nmethyl- D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonists disrupt the acquisition of a variety of spatial and non-spatial tasks. In the present investigation, the effects of the NMDA antagonist, ketamine, were examined in a task with minimal spatial demands. Twenty-six male Long-Evans rats, approximately 5 months of age at the beginning of training, served as the subjects. Before training began, all rats were reduced to 85% of their free feeding weight and maintained with this 15% reduction throughout training. After injections of ketamine or saline, rats were trained to respond in a runway to a nonmonotonic serial pattern consisting of 14-, 0-, 3-, or 7-pellets, respectively. Saline rats were capable of tracking the rewarded and non-rewarded elements of the series while the ketamine rats were markedly impaired. Specifically, analysis of the running times revealed a significant drug group x elements interaction, F(3, 36) = 3.01, p < .05. Examination of the interaction with Tukey a revealed that the saline rats ran significantly faster to the three rewarded elements of the series than the 0-pellet element (p s < .05). Conversely, ketamine-treated rats had similar running times to all elements of the series (ps > .05). The results are discussed in terms of NMDA-receptor involvement in the task acquisition.
Subject
Psychology
Discipline
Psychology
Document Type
article
DCMI Type
Text
Extent
5 leaves
Language
English
Call Number
BF1 .M63 v. 3 no. 2 1995
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Recommended Citation
Snider, Brooks; Compton, David M.; and Foster, Robert
(1995)
"The effect of the NMDA noncompetitive antagonist ketamine on serial learning in rats,"
Modern Psychological Studies: Vol. 3:
No.
2, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholar.utc.edu/mps/vol3/iss2/3
Department
Dept. of Psychology