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Effects of tellurium ingestion on learning capacity of the rat

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Abstract

Chronic consumption of tellurium results in heavy deposits of the metal in neuronal lysosomes. Acute exposure to tellurium produces noticeable toxic reactions, and long-term exposure may produce pathological changes. Previous studies have reported only mild neurological symptoms, and it is unclear as to how much functional brain damage results from uptake of the metal. The present study found rats, which had been exposed to a tellurium diet for five months, to be severely impaired in their ability to learn a sequence of behavioral tasks. The learning deficits remained severe even after exposure to tellurium had been terminated for three months. The results suggest long-term disturbance of motivational as well as discriminative capacity as a result of neural impairment.

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This work was supported in part by Research Grant NB07961 from the National Institute of Health, Public Health Service.

Denise Dru was the 1970 Adrian Summer Fellow of the Huntington Institute of Applied Medical Research.

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Dru, D., Agnew, W.F. & Greene, E. Effects of tellurium ingestion on learning capacity of the rat. Psychopharmacologia 24, 508–515 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00423441

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