Abstract
Intrastriatal kainic acid (KA) administration induces selective neuronal cell death in the striatum sparing passing nerve fibers and terminals. Although performance deficits of several kinds of learning tasks have been reported in striatal KA-lesioned rats, the problem remains unsolved whether these animals can discriminate visual stimuli to acquire such learning tasks. This study investigated, therefore, the effects of intrastriatal KA administration on the acquisition of vertical vs. horizontal stripe discrimination learning. Striatal KA-lesioned rats did not show any deficit in the process of learning this task in comparison with vehicle-treated control rats. Results suggest that learning deficits that have been reported in animals with a loss of striatal neurons cannot be explained by deficits of visual discrimination ability such as measured in this study.
