Passive avoidance in rats: disruption by dopamine applied to the nucleus accumbens

The acquisition of a one-trial step-through passive avoidance task was examined in rats following the administration of nialamide IP and dopamine (DA) or saline into the nucleus accumbens. DA-treated rats displayed impaired learning of the task as evidenced by their lower step-through latencies on a retest trial 7 days later. The specificity of this impairment was studied in a 2 x 2 design involving intracerebral injections prior to both training and testing trials. It was found that DA treatment prior to the training trial disrupted learning or memorization of the task but that DA did not affect performance or retrieval and did not induce state-dependent learning. These findings suggest that DA applied to the nucleus accumbens does not facilitate learning per se.