Differential effects of posterior septal lesions on dispositional and representational memory

A distinction between two classes of memory has been made in terms of the sensory availability of cues at the time of making discriminations which are influenced by past experience. Three tasks objectively defining this distinction were learned in a T-maze by three groups of rats: a delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMTS) which depends on representational memory; a simple sensory discrimination (SD) which depends on dispositional memory; and a more difficult discrimination, which also depends on dispositional memory, called the simultaneous conditional discrimination (SCD). The DNMTS and SD tasks were acquired quickly; the SCD task took many more trials. Posterior septal lesions impaired DNMTS performance but had no effect on retention of either the conditional discrimination (SCD) or the simple sensory discrimination (SD) tasks which depend on dispositional memory. The present study provides further evidence that dispositional and representational memory systems have at least partially distinct anatomical substrates in the brain and that it is the representational and not the conditional aspects of the DNMTS task that are impaired by the septal lesions.