Environmental constraints on motor abilities used in grooming, swimming, and eating by decorticate rats

In a number of successive tests, grooming, swimming, and eating behaviors of decorticate rats were reexamined by evoking the behaviors in various circumstances (stimulus conditions). The rats showed normal-length grooming sequences during spontaneous home cage grooming; when grooming was elicited by removing the rats from their home cage and soaking their fur by a brief swim, grooming-sequence length was abbreviated. In cold (18 degrees C) water, they swam well and with exaggerated vigor and frequently inhibited forelimb movements; in warm (37 degrees C) water, they swam poorly and paddled with all four limbs. To eat small pieces of food, they sat up and used their forepaws as do normal rats, but they frequently dropped the food; they did not use their forepaws to eat large pieces of food. When given powdered food, they first tried to grasp it in their mouth while they scratched at the floor surface with their front limbs; thereafter, they became increasingly proficient in licking it up. Thus, in a narrow range of stimulus conditions, decorticate rats can make movements resembling those of normal rats. They also improve with practice in some (eating powdered food) but not other (forepaw immobility, eating large food pellets) tasks. The study shows that in order to elucidate the role of the cortex in control of motor behavior, it is necessary to obtain "behavior profiles" of each behavior by testing the animals repeatedly and under widely varying test conditions.