Recovery of function on a two-way conditioned avoidance task following septal lesions in infancy: effects of early handling

Development of open-field activity in the rat following caudate lesions in infancy

“…Following septal lesions (Johnson, 1972;Johnson, Poplawsky, Bieliauskas, & Liebert, 1972), hypothalamic lesions (Bernardis & Frohman, 1971, 1972, or caudate lesions (Kling & Tucker, 1967;Goldman & Rosvold, 1972;Johnson et aI, 1972) in infant animals, behavioral deficits in adult animals have been observed which were similar to deficits produced by the same types of lesions in adult animals. Other investigators (Isaacson, Nonneman, & Schmaltz, 1968;Kling, 1962Kling, , 1965Schneider, 1970) have suggested that functional recovery may be site specific at subcortical levels.…”

Long-term maintenance of shuttlebox avoidance behavior before and after septal lesions

“…In previous studies (Johnson et al, 1972;Kenyon & Krieckhaus, 1965;Meyer et al, 1970;Schwartzbaum et al, 1967;Worsham & Hamilton, 1973), complete septal lesions have resulted in a facilitated acquisition of an active avoidance response. In the present study, septal lesions caused an increase in avoidance behavior in animals with 1,800 preoperative trials of low avoiding.…”

“…Other studies (Johnson et al, 1972;Kenyon & Krieckhaus, 1965;Meyer et al, 1970) showed that if intertrial crossings were punished, rats with septal lesions still exhibited an increase in the acquisition of an avoidance response. If intertrial crossings were not punished, rats with septal lesions showed significantly more crossings than controls (Schwartzbaum et al, 1967).…”

Performance of rats on the Maier Three-Table Task following septal lesions occurring 24 hours after birth.

“…When cats were given hippocampal lesions 3 days after birth, they did not differ significantly from normal cats on an extinction measure and a differential reinforcement of low rates (DRL) schedule of reinforcement, but they did demonstrate a passive avoidance deficit (Isaacson, Nonneman, & Schmaltz, 1968;Nonneman & Isaacson, 1973). Johnson and his colleagues (Johnson, 1972;Johnson, Bielauskas, & Lancaster, 1973;Johnson, Poplawsky, Bielauskas, & Liebert, 1972) tested adult rats that had been given septal lesions at 7 days of age and demonstrated enhanced two-way active avoidance learning as well as higher than normal response rates on a continuous reinforcement schedule, fixed-ratio schedule, and DRL schedule of reinforcement. Subsequent work showed that rats given septal lesions as early as 1 day after birth exhibited the high response rates and low efficiency on a DRL 20 task that are typical of animals given similar lesions in adulthood.…”