An assessment of gait analysis in the rehabilitation of children with walking difficulties.

Purpose: To assess the current status of computerized gait analysis techniques in the management of children with cerebral palsy or spina bifida who have significant walking disorders.

Method: Synthesis of available data from a review of the literature, drawing on MEDLINE, EMBASE, PRE-MEDLINE, HealthStar and PsychInfo. Other information was obtained from persons with expertise in computerized gait analysis.

Piloting and dead reckoning dissociated by fimbria-fornix lesions in a rat food carrying task.

Control rats and rats with fimbria-fornix (FF) lesions were tested in a foraging task that required that they emerge from either a visible or hidden home base onto an open field to hunt for food pellets, which they then carry back to the home base to eat. Once they were proficient at returning to a location, they and the home base were moved so that they emerged to forage from a new starting position. When the location of a visible home base was moved, both groups of rats learned to make accurate returns.

Perseveration on place reversals in spatial swimming pool tasks: further evidence for place learning in hippocampal rats.

Animals with damage to the fimbria-fornix (FF) or cells of the hippocampus (HIP) can learn a place problem but cannot learn matching-to-place problems, which feature a series of place "reversals." The two experiments described in the present report were designed to examine the causes of impairment on reversal learning. In experiment 1, control, HIP, and FF groups were trained to asymptote on a place problem, and then the location of the platform was moved.

Of mice and mazes: similarities between mice and rats on dry land but not water mazes.

Mice are impaired relative to rats in place and matching-to-place learning when tests are given in a swimming pool. The rat advantage may stem from a superior spatial ability or from adaptation to a niche that has prepared them for competency in the water. In the present study, mice (C57BL/6) were compared with rats (Long-Evans) in a number of dry-land spatial tasks given on a radial arm maze and in a place task given in a swimming pool.

Rats with fimbria-fornix lesions can acquire and retain a visual-tactile transwitching (configural) task.

The idea that the hippocampus is essential for acquisition and retention of a transwitching (configural) problem is evaluated with a visual-tactile task. The task requires the rats to pull up a string of one of two sizes for food, as signalled by room lighting conditions. Rats received cathodal fimbria-fornix lesions either prior to or after learning the task.