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Updated: Feb 9, 2026

An Objective and Reproducible Test of Olfactory Learning and Discrimination in Mice
Published on: March 22, 2018
The role of the hippocampus in object discrimination based on visual features
David Levcik1, Tereza Nekovarova2, Eliska Antosova3
1Department of Neurophysiology of Memory, Institute of Physiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Videnska 1083, 142 20 Prague 4, Czech Republic; Department of Pharmacology, Federal University of Parana, Av. Cel. Francisco Heraclito dos Santos 100, 81531-980 Curitiba, PR, Brazil.
Abstract:
The role of rodent hippocampus has been intensively studied in different cognitive tasks. However, its role in discrimination of objects remains controversial due to conflicting findings. We tested whether the number and type of features available for the identification of objects might affect the strategy (hippocampal-independent vs. hippocampal-dependent) that rats adopt to solve object discrimination tasks. We trained rats to discriminate 2D visual objects presented on a computer screen. The objects were defined either by their shape only or by multiple-features (a combination of filling pattern and brightness in addition to the shape). Our data showed that objects displayed as simple geometric shapes are not discriminated by trained rats after their hippocampi had been bilaterally inactivated by the GABAA-agonist muscimol. On the other hand, objects containing a specific combination of non-geometric features in addition to the shape are discriminated even without the hippocampus. Our results suggest that the involvement of the hippocampus in visual object discrimination depends on the abundance of object's features.
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