Olfactory Cues Potentiate Learning of Distant Visuospatial Information

The influence of proximal olfactory cues on place learning and memory was tested in two different spatial tasks. Rats were trained to find a hole leading to their home cage or a single food source in an array of petri dishes. The two apparatuses differed both by the type of reinforcement (return to the home cage or food reward) and the local characteristics of the goal (masked holes or salient dishes). In both cases, the goal was in a fixed location relative to distant visual landmarks and could be marked by a local olfactory cue. Thus, the position of the goal was defined by two sets of redundant cues, each of which was sufficient to allow the discrimination of the goal location. These experiments were conducted with two strains of hooded rats (Long-Evans and PVG), which show different speeds of acquisition in place learning tasks. They revealed that the presence of an olfactory cue marking the goal facilitated learning of its location and that the facilitation persisted after the removal of the cue. Thus, the proximal olfactory cue appeared to potentiate learning and memory of the goal location relative to distant environmental cues. This facilitating effect was only detected when the expression of spatial memory was not already optimal, i.e., during the early phase of acquisition. It was not limited to a particular strain.

[1]  E. Tolman.  Cognitive maps in rats and men. , 1948, Psychological review.

[2]  G. Turkewitz,et al.  Effect of intensity of auditory stimulation on directional eye movements in the human neonate. , 1966, Animal behaviour.

[3]  M. DURUP,et al.  ETUDE EXPERIMENTALE SUR LES CAPACITES D'ORIENTATION ET DE LOCALISATION OLFACTIVES CHEZ LE HAMSTER DORE MESOCRICETUS AURATUS WATERH. , 1970 .

[4]  D. Olton,et al.  Animal Behavior Processes , 2022 .

[5]  L. Nadel,et al.  The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map , 1978 .

[6]  A. Black,et al.  Stimulus control of spatial behavior on the eight-arm maze in rats ☆ ☆☆ , 1980 .

[7]  R. Morris.  Spatial Localization Does Not Require the Presence of Local Cues , 1981 .

[8]  The role of marking when reward is delayed. , 1983 .

[9]  N. Spear,et al.  Potentiation and overshadowing in preweanling and adult rats. , 1985, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.

[10]  N. J. Mackintosh,et al.  Blocking and Overshadowing between Intra-Maze and Extra-Maze Cues: A Test of the Independence of Locale and Guidance Learning , 1985 .

[11]  F. Schenk.  Development of place navigation in rats from weaning to puberty. , 1985, Behavioral and neural biology.

[12]  C. Thinus-Blanc,et al.  A study of exploratory behavior as an index of spatial knowledge in hamsters , 1986 .

[13]  C. Thinus-Blanc,et al.  A Study of Spatial Parameters Encoded During Exploration in Hamsters , 1987 .

[14]  Françoise Schenk,et al.  Comparison of spatial learning in woodmice (Apodemus sylvaticus) and hooded rats (Rattus norvegicus). , 1987 .

[15]  R. L. Jackson,et al.  Potentiation and overshadowing in pigeons , 1989 .

[16]  W. T. Tomlinson,et al.  Hamsters remember spatial information derived from olfactory cues , 1991 .

[17]  V. D. Chamizo,et al.  Reciprocal Overshadowing between Intra-Maze and Extra-Maze Cues , 1992, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. B, Comparative and physiological psychology.

[18]  B. Poucet.  Spatial cognitive maps in animals: new hypotheses on their structure and neural mechanisms. , 1993, Psychological review.

[19]  L. Devenport,et al.  Spatial navigation in natural habitats by ground-dwelling sciurids , 1994, Animal Behaviour.

[20]  R. J. McDonald,et al.  Parallel information processing in the water maze: evidence for independent memory systems involving dorsal striatum and hippocampus. , 1994, Behavioral and neural biology.

[21]  C M Langley,et al.  Spatial memory in the desert kangaroo rat (Dipodomys deserti). , 1994, Journal of comparative psychology.

[22]  P. Lavenex,et al.  Influence of local environmental olfactory cues on place learning in rats , 1995, Physiology & Behavior.

[23]  P Lavenex,et al.  Integration of olfactory information in a spatial representation enabling accurate arm choice in the radial arm maze. , 1996, Learning & memory.