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Age-related differences in appetitive trace conditioning and novel object recognition procedures.

ABSTRACT: Appetitive trace conditioning (TC) was examined over 6?months in younger-adult (2-8?months) and middle-aged (12-18?months) male Wistar RccHan rats, to test for early age-related impairment in working memory. Novel object recognition (NOR) was included as a comparison task, to provide a positive control in the event that the expected impairment in TC was not demonstrated. The results showed that TC improved at both ages at the 2?s but not at the 10?s trace interval. There was, however, evidence for reduced improvement from one day to the next in the middle-aged cohort tested with the 2?s trace conditioned stimulus. Moreover, within the 10?s trace, responding progressively distributed later in the trace interval, in the younger-adult but not the middle-aged cohort. Middle-aged rats showed NOR discriminative impairment at a 24?h but not at a 10?min retention interval. Object exploration was overall reduced in middle-aged rats and further reduced longitudinally. At the end of the study, assessing neurochemistry by HPLC-ED showed reduced 5-HIAA/5-HT in the dorsal striatum of the middle-aged rats and some correlations between striatal 5-HIAA/5-HT and activity parameters. Overall the results suggest that, taken in isolation, age-related impairments may be overcome by experience. This recovery in performance was seen despite the drop in activity levels in older animals, which might be expected to contribute to cognitive decline.

SUBMITTER: Marshall HJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6857625 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Age-related differences in appetitive trace conditioning and novel object recognition procedures.

Marshall Hayley J HJ Pezze Marie A MA Fone Kevin C F KCF Cassaday Helen J HJ

Neurobiology of learning and memory 20190724

Appetitive trace conditioning (TC) was examined over 6 months in younger-adult (2-8 months) and middle-aged (12-18 months) male Wistar RccHan rats, to test for early age-related impairment in working memory. Novel object recognition (NOR) was included as a comparison task, to provide a positive control in the event that the expected impairment in TC was not demonstrated. The results showed that TC improved at both ages at the 2 s but not at the 10 s trace interval. There was, however, evidence f ...[more]

PMID: 31351120

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Project description:IntroductionMultiple object tracking (MOT) is a powerful paradigm for measuring sustained attention. Although previous fMRI studies have delineated the brain activation patterns associated with tracking and documented reduced tracking performance in aging, age-related effects on brain activation during MOT have not been characterized. In particular, it is unclear if the task-related activation of different brain networks is correlated, and also if this coordination between activations within brain networks shows differential effects of age.MethodsWe obtained fMRI data during MOT at two load conditions from a group of younger (n = 25, mean age = 24.4 ± 5.1 years) and older (n = 21, mean age = 64.7 ± 7.4 years) healthy adults. Using a combination of voxel-wise and independent component analysis, we investigated age-related differences in the brain network activation. In order to explore to which degree activation of the various brain networks reflect unique and common mechanisms, we assessed the correlations between the brain networks' activations.ResultsBehavioral performance revealed an age-related reduction in MOT accuracy. Voxel and brain network level analyses converged on decreased load-dependent activations of the dorsal attention network (DAN) and decreased load-dependent deactivations of the default mode networks (DMN) in the old group. Lastly, we found stronger correlations in the task-related activations within DAN and within DMN components for younger adults, and stronger correlations between DAN and DMN components for older adults.ConclusionUsing MOT as means for measuring attentional performance, we have demonstrated an age-related attentional decline. Network-level analysis revealed age-related alterations in network recruitment consisting of diminished activations of DAN and diminished deactivations of DMN in older relative to younger adults. We found stronger correlations within DMN and within DAN components for younger adults and stronger correlations between DAN and DMN components for older adults, indicating age-related alterations in the coordinated network-level activation during attentional processing.

Dataset Information

Age-related differences in appetitive trace conditioning and novel object recognition procedures.

Publications

Age-related differences in appetitive trace conditioning and novel object recognition procedures.

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