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Effects of posttraining damage to the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus on conditioned stimulus transfer in two-way
Sandra Homs-Ormo1, Meritxell Torras-Garcia, Isabel Portell-Cortés
1Institut de Neurociencies, Departament de Psicobiologia i de Metodologia de les Ciencies de la Salut, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract:
The effects of posttraining excitotoxic lesions of the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPTg) on two-way active avoidance after changing the conditioned stimulus (CS) used during prelesion training were examined. Prelesion training was carried out with either a tone or a light as the CS, and this CS was changed during postlesion training. Replacing the tone with a light reduced the performance of control and lesioned rats, but the degree of reduction was higher in the latter. Replacing the light with a tone had slight detrimental effects in lesioned rats but not in controls. Thus, posttraining PPTg lesions slowed down the reacquisition of shuttle-box avoidance under conditions of CS transfer, an effect that may be attributable to disruption of attention and/or gating of sensory stimuli.
