Erratum to “Effects of pre-training pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus lesions on delayed matching- and non-matching-to-position in a T-maze in rats” [Behav. Brain Res. 160 (2005) 115–124]

Effects of posttraining damage to the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus on conditioned stimulus transfer in two-way active avoidance in rats.

“…There are several reports indicating that bilateral PPTg lesions increase anxiety indices (Podhorna & Franklin, 1998, 1999, 2000). However, we think it is very unlikely that anxiety might explain the present results, because we have demonstrated that rats of the same strain that have sustained bilateral excitotoxic damage to the PPTg do not show any enhancement of anxiety indices in the elevated plus-maze (Satorra-Marín, Homs-Ormo, Arevalo-Garcia, Morgado-Bernal, & Coll-Andreu, 2005), a result consistent with other data found after excitotoxic (Alderson, Walker, MacKinlay, Latimer, & Winn, 2000) and electrolytic (Homs-Ormo, Coll-Andreu, Satorra-Marín, Arevalo-Garcia, & Morgado-Bernal, 2003) PPTg lesions. On the other hand, the lack of detrimental effects found after posttraining PPTg lesions on active avoidance when none of the elements of training are changed (Fujimoto et al, 1992), as well as the fact that diazepam does not reduce the disruption of learning after pretraining PPTg lesions (Fujimoto et al, 1989), also argue against an anxiety mechanism.…”

Selective decrease of cholinergic signaling from pedunculopontine and laterodorsal tegmental nuclei has little impact on cognition but markedly increases susceptibility to stress

“…Previous studies have suggested that PPT/LDT are important for normal performance in spatial learning tasks, including the MWM (63)(64)(65)(66). To test if cholinergic neurons of the PPT/LDT can contribute to spatial learning and memory, we first investigated VAChT En1-Cre-flox/flox mice and their control littermates in the MWM task.…”

“…A role for PPT/LDT in spatial learning has been suggested because PPT excitotoxic lesions in rats caused impairment in the water and radial maze (63,65,66) as well as in the T-maze (64). Interestingly, whether spatial learning is the actual cognitive process affected after PPT lesion has been controversial, and alternative explanations, such as increased anxiety (73), motivational deficits (66), task difficulty (63, 64), or damage to structures adjacent to the PPT (74), have been suggested as alternative explanations for the spatial learning deficits.…”