Although male rats generally outperform females in many spatial tasks, sometimes gender differences are not present. This preliminary study examined gender effects in the Enemy avoidance task, in which a rat on a stable circular arena avoids approaching a small mobile robot while collecting randomly dispersed small pellets. Whenever distance between robot and the rat dropped below 25 cm, animal was punished by a mild footshock. Female rats showed thigmotaxis, hypolocomotion and avoidance of robot in the habituation phase, when approaches were not punished. No statistically significant differences in avoidance learning under reinforcement training sessions were observed; but females still spent significantly more time at periphery of the arena and foraged less than males. We conclude that females were able to perform at the same level as males under reinforcement despite different behavioral strategy. The thigmotaxic behavior appears to function as innate escape strategy in female rats triggered by the stressing effect of the moving robot rather then the presence of shocks., J. Svoboda, ... [et al.]., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
Spatial tasks in rodents are commonly used to study general mechanisms of cognition. We review two groups of novel spatial tasks for rodents and discuss how they can extend our understanding of mechanisms of spatial cognition. The first group represents spatial tasks in which the subject does not locomote. Locomotion influences neural activity in brain structures important for spatial cognition. The tasks belonging to the first group make it possible to study cognitive processes without the interfering impact of locomotion. The second group represents tasks in which the subject approaches or avoids a moving object. Despite this topic is intensively studied in various animal species, little attention has been paid to it in rodents. Both groups of the tasks are powerful tools for addressing novel questions about rodent cognition., D. Klement, K. Blahna, T. Nekovářová., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy