The effects of bilateral hippocampal lesions on two-way active avoidance in the guinea pig

Abstract

Guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus)

Facilitation of two-way avoidance of the guinea pig following intrahippocampal injections of procaine hydrochloride

“…Those animals that received P-HCl injections required significantly fewer trials to achieve learning criterion than saline control animals . This result is in agreement with studies concerning the effects of hippocampal lesions and avoidance behavior for guinea pig (Ireland et al , 1969), rat (Olton & Isaacson, 1968), and rabbit (papesdorf & Woodruff, 1970). The intertrial crossing data is in accord with the results of Isaacson, Douglas, and Moore (1961), in which both surgical control and experimental groups had an elevated rate of intertrial crossings but were not different from each other.…”

“…The guinea pig has been shown to perform poorly in two•way active avoidance tasks (Evonic & Brimer;1967;Ireland;. Several investigations have been concerned with various physiological manipulations on the two•way avoidance responses of the guinea pig; these procedures include lesions in the central visual system (Dyer, 1971), septal area (Lown, Hayes, & Schaub, 1969), and hippocampus (Ireland et aI, 1969).…”

The effects of bilateral septal lesions on two-way active avoidance in the guinea pig

“…The extremely low correlation between response latency and frequency of spontaneous crossing found in the septal group of the present study lend further support to this hypothesis. Arecent study (Ireland et al, 1969) has reported similar effects to those reported here with hippocampallesions in the guinea pig. These two studies on the guinea pig and earlier work with rats (Green et al, 1967) indicate a considerable overlap between the effects of these two types of lesions, the major effects being increased spontaneous activity, a facilitation of two-way active avoidance behavior, and reduction in freezing responses.1t appears that, at least in rodents, septal and hippocampal lesions produce very similar effects in the shuttle box task.…”