Assessment of attention in male and female Brattleboro rats using a self-paced five-choice serial reaction time task

Abstract The Brattleboro rat is a mutant variation of the Long–Evans strain that exhibits negligible central nervous system levels of vasopressin, a neuropeptide that may influence behavioral and cognitive processes. Compared to Long–Evans rats, Brattleboro rats exhibit diminished fear conditioning and have impairments in spatial memory and sensory gating. The present study sought to further evaluate the cognitive profile of vasopressin-deficient rats by studying attention in male and female Brattleboro and heterozygous rats using a self-paced version of the five-choice serial reaction time task. Male Brattleboro rats required significantly more sessions to meet the training criteria than those by heterozygotic and Long–Evans (wild type) rats. Female Brattleboro rats displayed significantly poorer attention accuracy compared to heterozygotic and Long–Evans rats. Taken together, the present findings add further evidence that vasopressin deficiency diminishes cognitive functioning.