Elevated T-maze as an animal model of memory: effects of scopolamine

The elevated T-maze (ETM) is a putative model for the assessment of anxiety and memory in rodents. This study was designed to further evaluate the utility of the ETM in the study of memory processes. We compared the performance of rats in the ETM, the water maze (WM) and the two-way avoidance task (TWA), after pretreatment with scopolamine (SCO; 0.3 or 1.2 mg/kg i.p.). In the ETM, rats were first trained to meet the criterion of remaining inside the enclosed arm for 300 seconds. Seventy-two hours after training, a retrieval test session was performed. At the lower dose, SCO impaired performance in the retrieval session on all three tasks, whereas in the training session an effect was noted only on the WM task. At the higher dose, SCO impaired the performance of rats in the training sessions for ETM and WM, but not TWA. In a fourth experiment using the elevated plus-maze, SCO showed anxiolytic-like effects at the higher dose only. In conclusion, the effects of SCO in rats submitted to the ETM were dose dependent, with the lower dose exerting a selective effect detected only on retrieval, whereas the higher dose induced motor effects that disrupted inhibitory avoidance acquisition, resulting in impaired retrieval. The results are discussed in terms of the utility of the ETM in the study of drug effects and the neurobiological mechanisms underlying anxiety, learning and memory.