Lesions within the head direction system reduce retrosplenial c-fos expression but do not impair performance on a radial-arm maze task

Vann, Seralynne Denise ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6709-8773 2018. Lesions within the head direction system reduce retrosplenial c-fos expression but do not impair performance on a radial-arm maze task. Behavioural Brain Research 338 , pp. 153-158. 10.1016/j.bbr.2017.10.026

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Abstract

The lateral mammillary nuclei are a central structure within the head direction system yet there is still relatively little known about how these nuclei contribute to spatial performance. In the present study, rats with selective neurotoxic lesions of the lateral mammillary nuclei were tested on a working memory task in a radial-arm maze. This task requires animals to distinguish between eight radially-oriented arms and remember which arms they have entered within a session. Even though it might have been predicted that this task would heavily tax the head direction system, the lesion rats performed equivalently to their surgical controls on this task; no deficit emerged even when the task was made more difficult by rotating the maze mid-way through testing in order to reduce reliance on intramaze cues. Rats were subsequently tested in the dark to increase the use of internally generated direction cues but the lesion rats remained unimpaired. In contrast, the lateral mammillary nuclei lesions were found to decrease retrosplenial c-Fos levels. These results would suggest that the head direction system is not required for the acquisition of the standard radial-arm maze task. It would also suggest that small decreases in retrosplenial c-Fos are not sufficient to produce behavioural impairments.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute (NMHRI) Psychology
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0166-4328
Funders:	Wellcome Trust
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 November 2017
Date of Acceptance:	20 October 2017
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2023 11:14
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/106238

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