Open-field behaviors and water-maze learning in the F substrain of Ihara epileptic rats.

Purpose: Genetically epileptic model rats, Ihara epileptic rat (IER/F substrain), have neuropathologic abnormalities and develop generalized convulsive seizures when they reach the age of approximately 5 months. Because the neuromorphologic abnormalities are centered in the hippocampus, we expected to observe spatial cognitive deficits. The present study aimed to evaluate emotionality and learning ability of the F substrain of IER.

Effects of prenatal maternal stress by repeated cold environment on behavioral and emotional development in the rat offspring.

It has been reported that many types of stresses, which caused physiological and psychological alterations in dams as prenatal maternal stress, affected behavioral and emotional traits of their offspring. However, effects of environmental temperature changes, which induce various stress responses in both animals and humans, have not been assessed as prenatal maternal stress. Repeated cold stress (RCS) is a type of chronic cold stress in which environmental temperature changes rapidly and frequently several times within a day.

Effect of lesions in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala on fear conditioning using auditory and visual conditioned stimuli in rats.

The lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA) is believed to be the site of auditory conditioned stimulus (CS) relay in classical fear conditioning. The present study attempts to determine whether the LA is specifically involved in fear conditioning using an auditory CS. Seven rats with lesions in the LA (Tone-Lateral group) and eight sham-operated rats in the control group were trained using an auditory CS (overtone based on an 800 Hz fundamental tone, 70 dB, 3.