Abstract
Rats from dams that were well fed or underfed (50% food reduction) during lactation received either large lesions of the dorsal hippocampus or sham operations at 60 days of age. The animals then were tested for open-field behavior, spontaneous alternation, spontaneous exploration, and spatial discrimination reversal learning. Main effects of nutrition were found in the open field and on the spatial learning and reversal tasks, as well as in body weight, eye opening, and time of appearance of body hair. Significant lesion effects were found in the open field and on spontaneous alternation and reversal learning. In contrast to two earlier studies, early diet had little effect on the response to later brain damage. These data show that the finding that early diet can affect the behavioral response to focal brain damage later in life may not generalize across all experimental conditions.
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Support for this study came from U.S.P.H.S. Grant 5-T32-ES07015 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to the Environmental Toxicology Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, and NINCDS Grant NS-11002 from the Biomedical Research Support Grant Program, Division of Research Resources, NIH, to S. Finger. The authors would like to thank Edward D. Levin, Ernest F. Mross, Latanya M. Reid, Linda C. Weiland, and Jodi L. White for their assistance. A preliminary report was presented at the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology meetings, New Orleans, November 1981.
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Laughlin, N.K., Finger, S. & Bell, J. Early undernutrition and later hippocampal damage: Effects on spontaneous behaviors and reversal learning. Psychobiology 11, 269–277 (1983). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03326806
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03326806