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Effect of atropine on learning, extinction, retention and retrieval in rats

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Summary

EEG changes induced by intraperitoneal injection of 6 mg/kg atropine sulphate were studied in freely moving rats with implanted electrodes. Sleep-like high voltage slow wave activity appeared in neocortex, hippocampus and reticular formation attaining maximum approximately 20 minutes after atropine injection. At the height of the atropine effect one-trial learning of a passive avoidance reaction was partly impaired. So was extinction of this overtrained reaction. Atropine injected 20 minutes before the retention test adversely affected retrieval of threshold conditioned reactions; this effect could not be demonstrated with slightly overtrained behavior. Atropine impaired neither the consolidation nor the storage of memory traces. The atropine induced dissociation between EEG and behavior is discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physiology, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Czechoslovakia

    O. Burešová, J. Bureš, Z. Bohdanecký & T. Weiss

  2. Research Institute for Pharmacy and Biochemistry, Prague, Czechoslovakia

    O. Burešová, J. Bureš, Z. Bohdanecký & T. Weiss

Authors
  1. O. Burešová
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  2. J. Bureš
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  3. Z. Bohdanecký
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  4. T. Weiss
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Burešová, O., Bureš, J., Bohdanecký, Z. et al. Effect of atropine on learning, extinction, retention and retrieval in rats. Psychopharmacologia 5, 255–263 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02341258

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02341258

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