In the absence of useful visual or other exteroceptive cues, rats can orient in their environment using idiothetic navigation, the process in which the information generated during self-motion is integrated to yield a homing vector leading the animal back to a point of departure. If perceivable exteroceptive cues in the visited environment are available, their spatial relationship is integrated with idiothetic information and stored in a cognitive map of the environment. Our previous experiments demonstrated that place navigation in rats is severely impaired after devaluation of the intramaze substratal information by shuffling, i.e. by its random displacement relative to the already traversed track. Several interpretative difficulties of the previous study have been eliminated in the present study by the use of an advanced version of the shuffling apparatus. The results show that shuffling-induced impairment of substratal idiothesis depends on the salience of intramaze cues, that on a stable featureless arena, idiothesis can be updated by non-visual allothetic cues, and that shuffling exposing the animal to sudden accelerations and decelerations interferes with idiothetic navigation by the inherent conflict between substratal and inertial idiothesis. It is concluded that pure substratal idiothesis not updated by extramaze and intramaze cues cannot provide reliable navigation over distances longer than 5 m.

Department of Neurophysiology of Memory Institute of Physiology Academy of Sciences Videnska 1083 14220 Prague Czech Republic

Citace poskytuje Crossref.org

Chronic MK-801 Application in Adolescence and Early Adulthood: A Spatial Working Memory Deficit in Adult Long-Evans Rats But No Changes in the Hippocampal NMDA Receptor Subunits

Drugs Interfering with Muscarinic Acetylcholine Receptors and Their Effects on Place Navigation

Operant behavior can be triggered by the position of the rat relative to objects rotating on an inaccessible platform