[Higher nervous activity in rats with symptoms of hereditary galactosemia]

The patterns of behaviour and neural processes in rats with symptoms of hereditary galactosemia were investigated. Certain impairment of neural processes, particularly of the internal inhibition process in galactosemic rats was established. This is evidenced by low conditioning rate and lower level of responding in 2-way shuttle-box avoidance achieved by galactosemic rats in comparison with galactose-resistant rat substrain. Significant changes in motor activity and emotionality level in the course of repeated open-field testings were not found in galactosemic rats. The pecularities of the active avoidance acquisition, an analysis of the capacity to the retention of acquired task demonstrated an impaired mechanism of long-term memory storage in galactosemic animals.