FIGURE 2.

Differential effects of experimental diets on cognitive behaviors. Shown are plots of discrimination scores for object location (A) and for object recognition (B) across time (baseline, week 5, week 11). A score of 1.0 indicates investigation of only the novel location or novel object; a score of 0.0 indicates equal investigation times for both locations or objects. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a statistically significant difference for object location memory among the diet groups. C, Trace eyeblink conditioning (EBC) was significantly impaired by both experimental diets, but much more so by the fat/fructose diet. Post hoc least significant difference (LSD) tests revealed that rabbits on the fat/fructose diet exhibited significantly fewer conditioned responses (CRs) than rabbits on either the control or cholesterol‐enriched diet (P = .037). An ANOVA on the percent of CRs during the final session of trace EBC confirmed a significant difference among the groups (F_2,18 = 7.6, P = .004) and post hoc LSD tests revealed that rabbits on either the cholesterol or fat/fructose diet exhibited significantly fewer CRs than rabbits on the control diet (P = .019, P = .001, respectively)