The effect of muscimol on the spatial recognition of rats

Abstract

Vestibular system (VN) is involved in the spatial recognition of animals. Animals with impaired VN were observed with poor spatial navigation abilities. The purpose of this thesis is to study the effect of muscimol on the spatial recognition of rats. It was found that the neonatal diffusion of muscimol to the VN significantly affected the spatial recognition of rats during dead reckoning test. In the light probe test, which distal visual cues were available, the treated rats spent significantly less time searching for the food pellet (student’s t-test: p<0.001). The return time was significantly higher in treated group than the sham control groupwhen they were tested in in the dark probe test (student’s t-test: p<0.001), which animals were limited to idiothetic cues. Similarly, the heading angles were significantly higher in all three different conditions, light/dark probe and new location tests (light: p<0.001; dark: p<0.001; new location: p<0.01). This finding suggests that neonatal diffusion of muscimol affects the development of vestibular nuclei and that thevestibular system is important for the processing of vestibular informationin spatial recognition.