Abstract
Rats from dams that were undernourished (8% casein diets) during pregnancy and lactation or well fed (25% casein diets) received frontal corticallesions at maturity. The animals were then tested for the ability to master a simple sensory discrimination and to learn reversals of that discrimination. Main effects of undernutrition and the frontal corticallesion were found in originallearning but not on the reversals, and animals that received both early undernutrition and the later focal brain lesion made more errors in originallearning than did rats that sustained only undernutrition or only the lesion. The suggestion that early nutritional history may be one of a number of factors that can help to explain why patients with seemingly similar brain lesions do not always show identical symptoms is discussed.
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Support for this study came from NINCDS Grant NS-11002 and from Biomedical Research Support Grant Program, Division of Research Resources, to S. Finger.
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Silva, M., Bouzrara, A., Finger, S. et al. Effects of early protein undernutrition and later frontal cortex damage on habit acquisition and reversallearning in the rat. Psychobiology 12, 141–146 (1984). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03332180
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03332180