FIGURE 8.

Effect of dorsal CA3/DG muscimol infusions on spatial alternation performance, as a behavioral control condition in rats from Experiment 2 (n = 8). Plots show the total number of spatial memory errors (i.e., return to same arm of the figure-8 maze on 2 consecutive laps, rather than alternating between the two arms) on 10 pre-training trials and 10 post-infusion trials on test day 1 (all rats infused with muscimol; mus) and test day 2 (all rats infused with vehicle; veh). Mean ± SEM number of errors for pre-training and post-vehicle trials designated by open circles, and for post-muscimol trials with filled circle. Muscimol impaired alternation performance, even after completing all infusions and mnemonic discrimination tests of Experiment 2 [t₍₇₎ = –3.22, p < 0.01]; vehicle did not alter rats’ alternation performance [t₍₇₎ = –0.15, p = 0.86].