A special case of learning disorder in isolant rats as a model of disintegration

The combination of two factors - isolation and ontogenesis (starting from 21 days) and subsequent training of rats to a cyclical habit - could in some animals (30%) lead to the formation of unusual behavioral strategies consisting of maintenance of the cyclical habit without reinforcement with food. This dissociation from the vital motivation is regarded as an analog of the disintegration phenomenon, a key step in psychoneurotic disorders. The most common type of disturbance in isolated animals was suppression of searching activity, with extreme learning difficulty, though a training process including a two-month break led to a significant increase in motor-searching activity in this situation. These behavioral abnormalities were accompanied by morphological changes in the sensorimotor cortex of the brain, with a relative thinning of layer 5 and selective decreases in the density of satellite glial cells and deviations from the normal correlational relationships between behavioral and neuroglial measures.