Publications [#52096] of Ruey-Kuang Cheng

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1. *Cheng, R.K., MacDonald, C.J., Williams, C.L., & Meck, W.H. (March 14, 2007). Organizational and activational effects of photoperiod on spatial and temporal memory in laboratory rats. (Paper presentation given at the 14th annual meeting of the International Conference on Comparative Cognition, Melbourne Beach, FL.).
   (last updated on 2007/04/10)

   Abstract:
   Spatial and temporal memory were studied in adult Sprague-Dawley rats that were conceived and reared in either short day (SD–8:16 light/dark) or long day (LD–16:8 light/dark) photoperiods. Both male and female LD rats showed an increased capacity of spatial memory as indexed by a lower number of choices to criterion in a 12-arm radial maze task compared to the performance of SD rats. In contrast, when trained in the peak-interval procedure, SD rats displayed a distortion in the content of temporal memory by showing a proportional rightward shift in the 20 and 60s temporal criteria, a pattern that is consistent with reduced cholinergic function in normal rats. Taken together, our results suggest that both spatial and temporal memory processes are sensitive to photoperiod variation in laboratory rats in a manner similar to that previously observed for reproductive behavior.