The Role of Acetylcholine in Attention in Turtles (Chrysemys picta)

Research on mammals and turtles has suggested that acetylcholine is involved in attention in these groups. Two experiments investigated the ability of painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) to ignore irrelevant stimuli when the basal forebrain acetylcholine system was compromised. In experiment 1, turtles given lesions of the basal magnocellular cholinergic nucleus (NBM) or sham lesions were tested on a go/no go discrimination between horizontal and vertical stripes with or without irrelevant inserts in the box. The irrelevant inserts were blue and white checked walls and green carpet on the floor. The group with lesions of the NBM and no irrelevant inserts had no difficulty learning the task, but the lesioned group with irrelevant inserts was impaired on the discrimination. The sham-lesioned group was not impaired by the presence of irrelevant inserts. In experiment 2, turtles were given either the acetylcholine muscarinic receptor blocker scopolamine or saline and tested on the same task. The turtles given scopolamine had no difficulty learning the task in the absence of irrelevant inserts, but they were severely impaired when irrelevant inserts were present. The irrelevant inserts did not affect the learning of control turtles given saline. These findings provide evidence that acetylcholine enhances turtles' ability to orient to relevant stimuli and suggest that its role in learning and memory may be to allow animals to orient to the stimuli relevant to a task and to ignore irrelevant stimuli.