Presenter: Jaime Marie Ross ‘03
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Peter Cain
Phone: 79-1371
E-mail: jross76@stlawu.edu
Presentation: Poster

This study investigated the role of glia in the CA1 region of the hippocampus in the spatial learning abilities in the conscious rat in a novel environment.  Eleven participants were randomly assigned to either the control group, using artificial cerebral spinal fluid, or the treatment group, using carbonoxolone.  Carbonoxolone has been shown to impair glial function, thus inhibiting the rat’s ability to orient itself using spatial cues.  This ability was tested using the Morris Water Maze.  The rat’s mission was to learn the location of a submerged platform when placed in various quadrants of a stock tank.  The performance of the participant was measured by the time it took for the rat to find the platform with four trials per day for five consecutive days.  The slopes of the acquisition learning curves, analysis of variance, and F-tests were performed to evaluate the effect of treatment and the effect of trial.  Results indicate that the ability of the rat to orient itself in a novel environment was significantly compromised by the impairment of the glial activity.  These findings suggest that glial mediation in the CA1 in the hippocampus is an important component of spatial learning and that carbonexolone treatment decreases both the acquisition and retrieval ability of the rat to orient itself in the water maze.