Behavioral flexibility is a cognitive process depending on prefrontal areas allowing adaptive responses to environmental changes. Serotonin transporter knockout (5-HTT−/−) rodents show improved reversal learning in addition to orbitofrontal cortex changes. Another form of behavioral flexibility, extradimensional strategy set-shifting (EDSS), heavily depends on the medial prefrontal cortex. This region shows functional changes in 5-HTT−/− rodents as well. Here we subjected 5-HTT−/− rats and their wild-type counterparts to an EDSS paradigm and a supplementary latent inhibition task. Results indicate that 5-HTT−/− rats also show improved EDSS, and indicate that reduced latent inhibition may contribute as an underlying mechanism.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.