Comparison of male and female rats in avoidance of a moving object: more thigmotaxis, hypolocomotion and fear-like reactions in females

Title:

Comparison of male and female rats in avoidance of a moving object: more thigmotaxis, hypolocomotion and fear-like reactions in females

Creator:

Svoboda, J., Telenský, P., Karel Blahna, Jan Bureš, and Aleš Stuchlík

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:e7a12090-3024-43b7-b3d6-7d6aef4b656d
uuid:e7a12090-3024-43b7-b3d6-7d6aef4b656d

Subject:

Fyziologie člověka a srovnávací fyziologie, fyziologie člověka, human physiology, gender differences, enemy avoidance task, strategies, anxiety, thigmotaxis, 14, and 612

Type:

article, články, model:article, and TEXT

Description:

Although male rats generally outperform females in many spatial tasks, sometimes gender differences are not present. This preliminary study examined gender effects in the Enemy avoidance task, in which a rat on a stable circular arena avoids approaching a small mobile robot while collecting randomly dispersed small pellets. Whenever distance between robot and the rat dropped below 25 cm, animal was punished by a mild footshock. Female rats showed thigmotaxis, hypolocomotion and avoidance of robot in the habituation phase, when approaches were not punished. No statistically significant differences in avoidance learning under reinforcement training sessions were observed; but females still spent significantly more time at periphery of the arena and foraged less than males. We conclude that females were able to perform at the same level as males under reinforcement despite different behavioral strategy. The thigmotaxic behavior appears to function as innate escape strategy in female rats triggered by the stressing effect of the moving robot rather then the presence of shocks., J. Svoboda, ... [et al.]., and Obsahuje seznam literatury

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
policy:public

Source:

Physiological research | 2012 Volume:61 | Number:6

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false