Impaired processing of local geometric features during navigation in a water maze following hippocampal lesions in rats

Jones, Peter M., Pearce, John Martindale ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6121-8650, Davies, Vanessa J., Good, Mark Andrew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1824-1203 and McGregor, Anthony 2007. Impaired processing of local geometric features during navigation in a water maze following hippocampal lesions in rats. Behavioral Neuroscience 121 (6) , pp. 1258-1271. 10.1037/0735-7044.121.6.1258

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Abstract

Hippocampal damage impairs navigation with respect to information provided by the shape of an arena. Recent evidence has suggested that normal rats use local geometric information, as opposed to a global geometric representation, to navigate to a correct corner. One implication of this pattern of results is that hippocampal lesions may impair processing of 1 or more of the local geometric features of an environment. The authors therefore investigated the effects of hippocampal cell loss in rats on navigation to a hidden goal with respect to a variety of local cues in an environment with a distinctive shape. Rats with lesions of the hippocampus were impaired in discriminating a right-angled corner from its mirror image. However, they were able to use cues provided by an acute-angled corner (Experiment 1) or a local polarizing cue (Experiment 2). In contrast, lesioned rats were impaired in discriminating long versus short walls (Experiment 3). Results indicate that the hippocampus plays a role in disambiguating locations by processing (metric) information related to the distance between corners.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Publisher:	American Psychological Association
ISSN:	1939-0084
Last Modified:	05 Feb 2025 22:48
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/32773

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