Discrimination of acoustic patterns in rats using the water T-maze

• Daniela M. de la Mora ^[1] ; Juan M. Toro ^[1]
  1. [1] Universitat Pompeu Fabra

     Universitat Pompeu Fabra

     Barcelona, España

     
• Localización: Psicológica: Revista de metodología y psicología experimental, ISSN-e 1576-8597, ISSN 0211-2159, Vol. 35, Nº 2, 2014, págs. 195-208
• Idioma: inglés
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Discriminación de patrones acústicos en ratas utilizando el laberinto acuático en T
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen
  • español

    Se ha propuesto que la extracción de reglas abstractas y su generalización a nuevas estancias es la base de funciones cognitivas superiores, tal como el lenguaje. La investigación con animales ha demostrado que diversas especies pueden extraer y generalizar patrones simples, así como establecer relaciones abstractas de igual-diferente. Sin embargo, tales hallazgos se han observado tras procedimientos de entrenamiento prolongados. Mediante un entrenamiento relativamente breve utilizando un laberinto acuático en T, probamos la capacidad de las ratas para discriminar y generalizar tripletes de tonos que implicaban una repetición, de tripletes que seguían una secuencia ordinal y no repetitiva.

    Nuestros resultados demuestran que bajo este procedimiento y tras sólo 12 sesiones, las ratas discriminan ambos patrones cuando entre ellos existe una diferencia evidente en variaciones de frecuencia (Experimento 1). Cuando tal diferencia se elimina (Experimento 2), no se observa la discriminación.

    Los resultados sugieren que un procedimiento basado en un laberinto acuático en T puede ser usado para explorar la discriminación de patrones acústicos en roedores.

  • English

    The extraction of abstract rules and their generalization to new items has been proposed to be at the heart of higher cognitive functions such as language. Research with animals has shown that various species can extract rather complex patterns from the input, as well as establish abstract same/different relations. However, much of these findings have been observed after extensive training procedures. Here, we tested rats’ capacity to discriminate and generalize tone triplets that entailed a repetition from triplets that followed an ordinal, non-repeating pattern following a relatively short discrimination training procedure in a water T-maze. Our findings demonstrate that, under this procedure and after only 12 sessions, rats can learn to discriminate both patterns when a reliable difference in pitch variations is present across them (Experiment 1). When differences in pitch are eliminated (Experiment 2), no discrimination between patterns is found.

    Results suggest a procedure based on a water T-maze might be used to explore discrimination of acoustic patterns in rodents.

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