Abstract
Temporally-graded retrograde amnesia (TGRA) refers to a phenomenon of premorbid memory loss whereby information acquired recently is more impaired than information acquired more remotely. Studies of human amnesia have illuminated this phenomenon (Hodges, 1994; Squire and Alvarez, 1995), but such studies necessarily rely on retrospective methods and imperfect tests. Studies in experimental animals have the advantage that retrograde amnesia can be studied prospectively, the locus and extent of brain lesions can be determined accurately, and the timing and strength of original learning can be precisely controlled. The socially transmitted food preference (STFP) task has been one of the most productive rodent behavioral tasks to study TGRA (Clark et al., 2002).
Materials and Reagents
Equipment
Procedure
The Task: The STFP task is separated into four distinct phases. Phase I consists of food deprivation and habituation of the demonstrator rats to the powder rat chow (“tuning of the demonstrator rats”). Phase II consists of the feeding of the demonstrator with a specified flavored meal, and the interaction of a demonstrator rat with an observer rat. Phase III is a specified delay interval following the interaction between the rats. Finally, phase IV is a testing period in which the observer rat is given a choice between a familiar (the flavored meal that the demonstrator rat was fed) and a novel (a flavor that neither rat has been exposed to) meal chow sample to test the memory of the interaction.
Recipes
Acknowledgments
This protocol is adapted from Clark et al. (2002).
References
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