Age-related differences in appetitive trace conditioning and novel object recognition procedures

Abstract Appetitive trace conditioning (TC) was examined over 6 months in younger-adult (2-8 months) and middle-aged (12-18 months) male Wistar RccHan rats to test for early age-related impairment in working memory. Novel object recognition (NOR) was included as a comparison task to provide a positive control in the event that the expected impairment in TC was not demonstrated. The results showed that TC improved at both ages at the 2s but not at the 10s trace interval. There was, however, evidence for reduced improvement from one day to the next in the middle-aged cohort tested with the 2s trace conditioned stimulus. Moreover, within the 10s trace, responding progressively distributed later in the trace interval, in the younger-adult but not the middle-aged cohort. Middle-aged rats showed NOR discriminative impairment at a 24h but not at a 10 min retention interval. Object exploration was overall reduced in middle-aged rats and further reduced longitudinally. At the end of the study, assessing neurochemistry by HPLC-ED showed reduced 5-HIAA/5-HT in the dorsal striatum of the middle-aged rats and some correlations between striatal 5-HIAA/5-HT and activity parameters. Overall the results suggest that, taken in isolation, age-related impairments may be overcome by experience. This recovery in performance was seen despite the drop in activity levels in older animals, which might be expected to contribute to cognitive decline.