Chronic stress leaves novelty-seeking behavior intact while impairing spatial recognition memory in the Y-maze

Ryan L. Wright, Cheryl Conrad

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

100 Scopus citations

Abstract

This experiment examined whether chronic stress disrupts novelty-seeking behavior under conditions that impair spatial memory. Rats were restrained for 6 h per day for 21 days, then tested in either a traditional spatial recognition Y-maze that requires extra-maze spatial cues to navigate or a version with salient intra-maze cues in addition to the extra-maze spatial cues. As previously shown, chronic restraint stress impaired performance on the spatial version of the Y-maze. However, chronically stressed rats performed well in the intra-maze cue version. The results indicate that the deficits in Y-maze performance following chronic stress are not attributed to neophobia, but likely reflect neurochemical and/or neurobiological changes underlying spatial memory ability.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)151-154
Number of pages4
JournalStress
Volume8
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2005

Keywords

  • Novelty-seeking
  • Object recognition
  • Restraint stress
  • Spatial memory

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physiology
  • Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
  • Endocrine and Autonomic Systems
  • Psychiatry and Mental health
  • Behavioral Neuroscience

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