EFFECT OF POSTTRAINING INJECTIONS OF GLUCOSE ON ACQUISITION OF 2 APPETITIVE LEARNING-TASKS
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The present experiments were designed to examine the effect of posttraining glucose injections on the acquisition of two appetitive tasks in an 8-arm radial maze. On a win-stay visual discrimination task, the presence of food in four randomly selected maze arms was signaled by a light cue, and rats were required to visit each of the four lit arms twice within a trial. The animals were given one trial per day and injected immediately posttraining on Day 5. A dose of 2.0 g/kg glucose significantly improved win-stay acquisition relative to the performance of controls, but a dose of 100 mg/kg had no effect. On a win-shift task, rats were allowed to obtain food from four randomly selected maze arms, followed by a delay period in which they were removed from the maze. The animals were returned to the maze for a retention test, in which only the arms that had not been visited prior to the delay contained food. After training on shorter delays, 18 h were imposed between the first and second four choices; glucose was injected immediately after the first four choices. Glucose doses of both 2.0 g/kg and 100 mg/kg significantly improved retention, relative to that of controls. The results demonstrate that the memory-improving action of glucose generalizes to appetitive tasks, and they suggest that glucose can improve memory in appetitive tasks with different mnemonic requirements. 1990, Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.
