Failure of rats to escape from a potentially lethal microwave field

Ocularly pigmented rats, all mature females of the Long-Evans strain, were repeatedly presented an opportunity to escape from an intense 918-MHz field (whole-body dose rate = 60 mW/g) to a field of lower intensity (40, 30, 20, or 2 mW/g) by performing a simple locomotor response. Other rats could escape 800-microamperemeter faradic shock to the feet and tail by performing the same response in the same milieu, a multimode cavity. None of 20 irradiated rats learned to associate entry into a visually well-demarcated area of the cavity with immediate reduction of dose rate, in spite of field-induced elevations of body temperature to levels that exceeded 41 degrees C and would have been lethal but for a limit on durations of irradiation. In contrast, all of ten rats motivated by faradic shock rapidly learned to escape. The failure of escape learning by irradiated animals probably arose from deficiencies of motivation and, especially, sensory feedback. Whole-body hyperthermia induced by a multipath field may lack the painful or directional sensory properties that optimally promote the motive to escape. Moreover, a decline of body temperature after an escape-response-contingent reduction of field strength will be relatively slow because of the large thermal time constants of mammalian tissues. Without timely sensory feedback, which is an essential element of negative reinforcement, stimulus-response associability would be imparied, which could retard or preclude learning of an escape response.