Taste aversion and passive avoidance in rats with hippocampal lesions

The supramammillary area: its organization, functions and relationship to the hippocampus

The supramammillary area of the hypothalamus, although small in size, can have profound modulatory effects on the hippocampal formation and related temporal cortex. It can control hippocampal plasticity and also has recently been shown to contain cells that determine the frequency of hippocampal rhythmical slow activity (theta rhythm). We review here its organization and anatomical connections providing an atlas and a new nomenclature. We then review its functions particularly in relation to its links with the hippocampus. Much of its control of behaviour and its differential activation by specific classes of stimuli is consistent with a tight relationship with the hippocampus. However, its ascending connections involve not only caudal areas of the cortex with close links to the hippocampus but also reciprocal connections with more rostral areas such as the infralimbic and anterior cingulate cortices. These latter areas appear to be the most rostral part of a network that, via the medial septum, hippocampus and lateral septum, is topographically mapped into the hypothalamus. The supramammillary area is thus diffusely connected with areas that control emotion and cognition and receives more topographically specific return information from areas that control cognition while also receiving ascending information from brain stem areas involved in emotion. We suggest that it is a key part of a network that recursively transforms information to achieve integration of cognitive and emotional aspects of goal-directed behaviour.

Fetal hippocampal transplants restore conditioned blocking in rats with dorsal hippocampal lesions: effect of age

Previous studies have shown that conditioned blocking of taste aversion learning in 3-month-old Wistar rats depends on the hippocampal system integrity. Thus, the aim was to demonstrate that enough connectivity would develop after a graft to support the attention mechanism required for conditioned blocking. In the first experiment, bilateral homotopic grafts of 16-17 day-old hippocampal fetal tissue applied to 3-month-old male Wistar rats after electrolytical lesions of the dorsal hippocampus reinstated conditioned blocking tested 5 months after the transplantation. Unexpectedly, an early age-dependent impairment of conditioned blocking, similar to that induced by hippocampal lesions, was found in the 8-month-old control group. This finding was further supported by the results of the second experiment. Non-operated 3-month-old but not 8-month-old Wistar rats showed conditioned blocking. The results are discussed in terms of early hippocampal vulnerability, prevented by fetal grafts.

Conditioned taste aversion in rats with excitotoxic brain lesions

Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) is well known to be a robust and long-lasting learning after a single conditioned stimulus (CS) (taste)--unconditioned stimulus (US) (malaise) pairing. The neural mechanisms of this taste aversion learning still remain to be resolved. To elucidate the basic brain mechanisms of the taste aversion learning, we examined the effects of lesions of various sites of the rat brain on the acquisition and retention of CTAs. Confined brain lesions were made by injections of a small amount of excitotoxic drug, ibotenic acid. CTAs were established to saccharin (CS) by pairing its ingestion with an i.p. injection of LiCl (US). Rats lacking the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) almost completely failed to acquire CTAs. The second most effective lesion was in the medial thalamus including the parvocellular part of the ventral posteromedial nucleus of the thalamus (VPMpc) and the midline part, followed by the damage of the lateral nuclear group of the amygdala including the basolateral amygdaloid nucleus. Lesions of the gustatory cortex (GC) and hippocampus induced moderate effects, but lesions in the other subnuclei of the amygdala, such as the medial and central amygdaloid nuclei, entorhinal cortex, lateral hypothalamic area, and ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus induced slight or no effects. On the other hand, paired lesions among the amygdala, medial thalamus and GC caused severe impairment of CTAs; in particular, lesions of amygdala and VPMpc completely disrupted acquisition of CTAs. These results suggest that the PBN, medial thalamus and the lateral nuclear group of the amygdala play an essential role in the formation of taste aversion learning.

Reversible inactivation of dorsal hippocampus by tetrodotoxin impairs blocking of taste aversion selectively during the acquisition but not the retrieval in rats

The role of the dorsal hippocampus in the different stages of blocking was examined in a taste aversion learning task. Blocking is a learning effect in which one previously conditioned element of a compound makes the conditioning of the added element difficult. An effective blocking procedure with one trial in each stage was tested in unoperated rats. In the first stage, rats drank saccharin and later received lithium chloride by i.p. injection. In the second stage, they were presented with a serial compound saccharin-cider vinegar before lithium injection. In a one-bottle, test a reduced aversion to cider vinegar was observed in this group compared to control groups with no previous saccharin aversion. Bilateral tetrodotoxin (TTX) injection (10 ng/microliters) in the dorsal hippocampus attenuated blocking if this was applied before drinking the compound stimulus during the second stage, but it produced no effect applied either before drinking saccharin in the first stage or before testing. Non-specific retrieval deficit produced by TTX injection applied before testing was ruled out in a control group subjected to a conventional cider vinegar aversion learning which showed complete retrieval of the aversion under TTX. It is concluded that the hippocampal function relevant for blocking takes place during the compound phase.

Temporal processes of formalin pain: differential role of the cingulum bundle, fornix pathway and medial bulboreticular formation

Subcutaneous injection of formalin produces a characteristic biphasic pain response. An early phase develops in the first 5 min after injection; the pain then decreases for 10-15 min, followed by a gradual rise to a stable plateau that lasts about 1 h. Rats were injected with 1 microliter of 2% lidocaine or saline into the anterior cingulum bundle at 0 (immediately), 10 or 30 min prior to formalin injection, or 10, 20 or 30 min after formalin injection, and tested for analgesia in the late phase of the formalin test, 30-70 min after formalin injection. A time-dependent increase in analgesia was obtained when lidocaine was injected into the cingulum at periods ranging from 10 to 30 min after formalin injection, reflecting an anaesthetic duration of less than 20 min. When lidocaine was injected 0 or 10 min prior to formalin injection, a time-dependent increase in analgesia in the late phase was again observed. In these groups, lidocaine should have blocked cingulum activity during the early but not the late phase. The role of the fornix pathway and the medial bulboreticular formation in mediating formalin pain was also examined. Lidocaine produced analgesia in the late phase when injected into the fornix prior to formalin injection but had no effect when administered after it. In contrast, when lidocaine was injected into the medial bulboreticular formation it produced analgesia in the late phase when administered after formalin injection, but not prior to it. Taken together, these results suggest that the late pain response to formalin is in part dependent upon plasticity in the central nervous system which occurs during the transient early phase.

Effects of conditioned taste aversion on extracellular serotonin in the lateral hypothalamus and hippocampus of freely moving rats

This study used microdialysis to monitor extracellular levels of 5-HT and its metabolite, 5-hydroxyindole acetic acid (5-HIAA) in the lateral hypothalamus (LH) and hippocampus of freely moving rats that had developed a CTA to a 2.5 mM saccharin solution (CS) following its pairing with illness induced by lithium chloride (US). Results showed that oral infusion of the saccharin CS significantly enhanced extracellular LH 5-HT in animals that had developed a taste aversion compared with control groups, including unconditioned (CS-no US) and pseudoconditioned (no CS-US) subjects. As an anatomical control, the hippocampus was identified based on previous research suggesting that it is not integrally involved in CTA learning or retrieval and that 5-HT in this brain site does not directly mediate feeding behavior but is closely correlated with arousal. In contrast with the results obtained in the LH, hippocampal 5-HT was not preferentially elevated in subjects in the CTA group but rather was increased to the same extend in both CTA and control groups after saccharin infusion. Moreover, the increase in LH 5-HT for the CTA group was nearly twice that observed in the hippocampus for any group. Acute administration of LiCl elevated extracellular 5-HT to similar levels in both sites, well above the changes observed following conditioning. 5-HIAA was unaffected in either brain site by oral infusion of saccharin solution or injection of LiCl.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Kynurenic acid antagonizes hippocampal quinolinic acid neurotoxicity: behavioral and histological evaluation

In the present study, we evaluate the ability of kynurenic acid to protect hippocampal neurons from the neurotoxicity of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) agonist quinolinic acid. Bilateral intrahippocampal injection of quinolinic acid (120 nmol) led to severe behavioral disturbances and total loss of hippocampal neurons. Intrahippocampal co-injection of kynurenic acid (360 nmol) completely prevented cell loss and behavioral disturbances. However, the protection was incomplete when kynurenic acid was intraperitoneally injected (500 mg/kg, repeated during 4 days). These above results indicate that kynurenic acid can antagonize the neuronal degeneration mediated by excessive stimulation of NMDA receptors in vivo.

Noxious stimuli produce prolonged changes in the CA1 region of the rat hippocampus

Limbic structures including the hippocampus are thought to be involved in pain though not much is known of their neuronal responses to noxious stimuli. In this report we show that a prolonged and substantial depression of the dorsal hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cell population spike is produced by a brief but intense noxious stimulus applied to the tail of lightly anaesthetized rats. This depression is temperature-dependent and habituates to subsequent noxious stimuli applied more than 1 h later. Further, the depression is absent when noxious heat is applied in the presence of hippocampal theta rhythm.

Time-dependent deficits in delay conditioning produced by trimethyltin

Trimethyltin (TMT) produces behavioral and cognitive deficits resulting, in part, from limbic system toxicity. To determine whether these effects result from learning deficits or accelerated memory loss, the present experiment examined two delay conditioning paradigms in rats previously treated with either saline or TMT. Saline-treated Long-Evans rats receiving injections of lithium after consuming saccharin-flavored water later avoided saccharin ingestion: the degree of avoidance varied inversely with the time (0.5, 3 or 6 h) separating initial saccharin availability and lithium injection. Rats treated with TMT (8 mg/kg IV, 30 days prior) showed impaired conditioning at the long but not the short or intermediate delay conditions, suggesting that the deficits were mnemonic and not associative. Similar delay-dependent deficits in rats treated with TMT were observed in a passive avoidance task that arranged one of two delays between response emission and shock delivery during training. The effects of TMT on delay conditioning were accompanied by reduced bodyweight and hippocampal pathology. In summary, TMT appears to alter the temporally dependent association of events (entering darkened compartment versus saccharin consumption) and consequences (foot shock versus lithium administration) during acquisition. Furthermore, the observed deficits in delay conditioning produced by TMT did not appear to be task specific, with similar effects determined with tests of both somatosensory and gustatory avoidance learning designed to distinguish between functional alterations due to deficits in memorial processes from those due to altered sensory, motor, or associative processes.

Potentiation of odor by taste and odor aversions in rats are regulated by cholinergic activity of dorsal hippocampus

Limbic cholinergic activity is critically involved in the retention of learned aversions tasks. The purpose of these experiments was to assess the role of cholinergic mechanisms of the dorsal hippocampus in the acquisition of both odor and potentiated odor aversions through taste aversion. Cholinergic activity was increased by physostigmine (Phys). When Phys was applied before the presentation of an odor-taste compound during acquisition, the potentiation of odor-aversion was disrupted, while taste aversion was left intact. When hippocampal cholinergic activity was reduced with the muscarinic antagonist scopolamine (Scop), enhancement of potentiated odor aversion was observed, again with no effect on taste aversion. Moreover, when Phys was applied before an odor alone it also disrupted odor avoidance in two different odor tests conditioning situations, i.e., odor was followed immediately by lithium chloride or foot shock. Neither Scop nor Phys had any effect on taste or potential odor aversions when applied to fronto-parietal cortex. These results suggest that cholinergic activity of the hippocampus is involved in the acquisition of odor aversion conditioning.

Disruption of neophobia, conditioned odor aversion, and conditioned taste aversion in rats with hippocampal lesions

Previous studies have implicated the hippocampus in the acquisition of conditioned taste aversions. However, the effect of hippocampal (HPC) lesions on the acquisition of conditioned aversions to the distal olfactory cue has not been investigated. In this study rats with bilateral electrolytic hippocampal lesions were given access to an odor conditioned stimulus (CS) alone or a compound odor-taste CS, followed by an injection of LiCl or saline. The results indicated that HPC lesions attenuated the neophobic response to both CSs, and disrupted conditioned odor and taste aversions, relative to sham-operated controls. Furthermore, the disruption in conditioned odor aversions could not be attributed to attenuation of neophobia in lesioned subjects nor to prolonged neophobia in sham-operated controls. The results are consistent with pharmacological studies in suggesting that the hippocampus is involved in the formation of conditioned odor aversions.

The behavioral effects of lesions of the hippocampus: a review

Many investigations have been conducted in an effort to deduce the nature of hippocampal function. This paper is an overview of the work done by several researchers in their attempt to find the possible connections between overt behaviors and hippocampal structures in the rat.

Comparison between the behavioural effects of septal and hippocampal lesions: a review

The literature on the behavioural effects of septal and hippocampal lesions is classified according to behavioural paradigm. The effects of the two kinds of lesion are summarized and compared to each other. A 'septo-hippocampal syndrome,' consisting of the effects common to both lesions, is delineated, and divergences between the effects of the two lesions are noted.