These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Destruction of central noradrenergic neurones with DSP4 impairs the acquisition of temporal discrimination but does not affect memory for duration in a delayed conditional discrimination task.
    Author: al-Zahrani SS, al-Ruwaitea AS, Ho MY, Bradshaw CM, Szabadi E.
    Journal: Psychopharmacology (Berl); 1997 Mar; 130(2):166-73. PubMed ID: 9106915.
    Abstract:
    This experiment examined the effect of destroying central noradrenergic neurones using the selective neurotoxin N-(2-chloroethyl)-n-ethyl-2-bromobenzylamine (DSP4) on the acquisition of a temporal discrimination and on memory for duration, using a delayed conditional discrimination task. In phase I, rats that had received systemic treatment with DSP4 and vehicle-treated control rats were trained in a series of discrete trials to press lever A following a 2-s presentation of a light stimulus, and lever B following an 8-s presentation of the same stimulus. Following stimulus offset, a response on a panel placed midway between the two levers was required to initiate lever presentation; a single response on either lever resulted in withdrawal of both levers and, in the case of a "correct" response, reinforcer delivery. Both groups acquired accurate discrimination, achieving 90% correct choices within 50 sessions; the DSP4-treated group acquired accurate performance more slowly than the control group. In phase II, delays were interposed between stimulus offset and lever presentation in 50% of the trials. In the absence of a delay, discriminative accuracy was lower in the DSP4-treated group than in the control group. Accuracy declined as a function of post-stimulus delay in both groups; both groups showed a delay-dependent bias towards responding on lever A ("choose-short" bias). Neither of these effects differed significantly between the two groups. The concentrations of noradrenaline in the parietal cortex and hippocampus were reduced by 90% and 89% in the DSP4-treated group, compared to the levels in the control group, but the levels of dopamine, 5-hydroxytryptamine and 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid did not differ significantly between the groups. The results confirm the deleterious effect of DSP4 on the acquisition of temporal discrimination, but do not provide evidence for a role of the noradrenergic innervation of the hippocampus and neocortex in temporal working memory.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]