Thiamine deficiency in rats produces cognitive and memory deficits on spatial tasks that correlate with tissue loss in diencephalon, cortex and white matter

doi:10.1016/0166-4328(94)00162-9

Behavioural Brain Research

Volume 68, Issue 1, April 1995, Pages 75-89

https://doi.org/10.1016/0166-4328(94)00162-9 Get rights and content

Abstract

Exploratory activity, spontaneous alternation, learning and memory abilities were examined in the pyrithiamine-induced thiamine deficiency (PTD) rat model of Wernicke-Korsakoff's syndrome and pair-fed controls (CT). PTD and CT animals showed normal retention of a single trial of a passive avoidance task acquired prior to the acute stages of thiamine deficiency. While there were no significant group differences in spontaneous activity, PTD animals with extensive damage to internal medullary lamina (IML-lesioned) of thalamus and mammillary body nuclei demonstrated a significant decrease in spontaneous alternation and were significantly impaired in learning both the initial spatial non-matching-to-position (NMTP) task and the reverse MTP task. PTD animals without IML damage (IML-spared) were only impaired on the acquisition of NMTP. Examination of response patterns suggest that the learning impairment was related to an inability to adopt or shift to the appropriate response rule. Performance of PTD IML-lesioned animals on NMTP mixed-delay sessions (4, 30, 60, 90 s) was similar to controls and PTD IML-spared, but was significantly lower on MTP delay trials. These IML-lesioned rats also had significant reductions in thickness of frontal and parietal cortex, corpus callosum and severe neuronal loss in anterior and reticular thalamic nuclei. Four PTD IML-lesioned animals that were unable to learn the NMTP task had more extensive cortical, white matter and thalamic damage than the PTD IML-lesioned animals that did learn the task. These results demonstrate that thiamine deficiency in the rat produces behavioral changes ranging from mild cognitive deficits to severe learning and memory impairments. Pathologic damage following a bout of thiamine deficiency also varies from neuronal loss in select thalamic nuclei to tissue loss in large regions of thalamus, mammillary bodies and cortex. Learning and memory deficits are closely related to the degree of cortical and diencephalic damage.

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Research reportThiamine deficiency in rats produces cognitive and memory deficits on spatial tasks that correlate with tissue loss in diencephalon, cortex and white matter

Abstract

Brain Res. Bull.

Alcohol

Physiol. Behav.

Behav. Brain Res.

Behav. Brain Res.

Brain Res.

Neuroscience

Pharmacol. Biochem. Behav.

Impairment of spontaneous alternation behavior in sequential test procedures following mammillary body lesions in mice: evidence for time-dependent interference-related memory deficits

Behav. Neurosci.

Separating cognitive impairment in neurologically asymptomatic alcoholism from Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome: is the neuropsychological distinction justified?

Psychol. Bull.

Modeling working and reference memory in rats: effects of scopolamine on delayed matching to position

Behav. Pharmacol.

Alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome: some unresolved issues concerning etiology, neuropathology and cognitive deficits

J. Clin. Exp. Neuropsychol.

Thalamic relations of the medial cortex in the rat

Brain Behav. Evol.

Comparative effects of cholinergic drugs and lesions of the nucleus basalis or fimbria-fornix on delayed matching in rats

Psychopharmacology

Chance stimulus sequences for discrimination tasks

Psychol. Bull.

Effects of scopolamine on delayed matching and non-matching to sample responses in T-maze in rats

Kodo Jap. J. Psychopharmacol.

Neuropathological changes in alcoholics

Brain shrinkage in chronic alcoholics: a pathologic study

Br. Medical J.

Selective memory loss and global intellectual deficits in alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome

Psychol. Med.

Hippocampectomy and response perseveration in the rat

J. Comp. Physiol. Psychol.

Response latency and accuracy on a pretrained non-matching-to-sample task in rats recovered from pyrithiamine-induced thiamine deficiency

Behav. Neurosci.

The cortical projections of the mediodorsal nucleus and adjacent thalamic nuclei in the rat

J. Comp. Neurol.

Role of diencephalic lesions and thiamine deficiency in Korsakoff's amnesia: insights from animal models

Pattern and progression of thiamine deficiency-induced diencephalic lesions in the rat

Soc. Neurosci. Abstr.

Research report
Thiamine deficiency in rats produces cognitive and memory deficits on spatial tasks that correlate with tissue loss in diencephalon, cortex and white matter