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ONTOGENY OF EYEBLINK CONDITIONING IN THE RAT: AUDITORY FREQUENCY AND DISCRIMINATION LEARNING EFFECTS
Citation:
Andrews, S., J. Freeman, C. Carter, AND M. Stanton. ONTOGENY OF EYEBLINK CONDITIONING IN THE RAT: AUDITORY FREQUENCY AND DISCRIMINATION LEARNING EFFECTS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/J-95/481.
Description:
The present study sought to determine whether acoustic properties of the auditory conditioned stimulus (CS) or the use of a discrimination learning procedure would alter the emergence of eyeblink conditioning between Postnatal Day 17 and 24 (PND17-24) in the rat. n Experiment 1, we employed a 3 x 2 x 2 factorial design, involving pitch of the auditory CS (2.8, 5.0, & 9.0 kHz), training condition (paired vs unpaired), and age (PND17 or PND24). ssociative learning was evident at all tone frequencies on PND24, but increased across frequencies on PND17, although large age differences in conditioning remained at all tone frequencies. n Experiment 2, rat pups were trained to discriminate 2.8 vs 9.0 kHz tones on PND17 or 24. yeblink conditioning increased with tone frequency on PND24 but discriminative conditioning failed to appear on PND17. hese findings are discussed in relation to the role of auditory system maturation in the ontogeny of eyeblink conditioning.