background and objective: intracerebroventricular (icv) injection of streptozotocin (stz) causes cognitive impairment in rats. the beneficial effect of saffron main component, safranal was investigated on icv stz-induced learning, memory, and cognitive impairment in male rats. materials and methods: for this purpose, rats were injected with icv stz bilaterally, on days 1 and 3 (3 mg/kg). the st...

One of the most perspective ideas of further development of Reinforcement Learning (RL) research involves using associative learning models to improve performance of reinforcement learning agents. Learning Classifier Systems (LCS) have proved to be one of the most successful classes of RL methods that have been applied to maze environments. However, so far LCS have shown their effectiveness for...

Background and Objective: Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) usually leads to memory deficit. In this study, we tried to assess the effect of Withania somnifera extract on the impaired learning and memory in the intrahippocampal kainate model of TLE in the rat. Materials & Methods: Male rats (n=32) were divided into sham, extract+sham, kainite, and kainite+extract. For induction of epilepsy, unilate...

Introduction: Ascorbic acid (AA) acts as an antioxidant in the Central nervous system (CNS) of the mammalians. It is released from the some nerve ending together with neurotransmitters. The results have shown that Ascorbic acid could affect learning as well as memory. In this study, we examined the effect of ICV injection of ascorbic acid on learning and memory by Morris water maze. Method: In...

Lead (Pb2+) is a well known neurotoxin that was frequently found in the environment and chronic exposure to lead has been matter of public health. In the present study the effect of lead on spatial memory in developmentally exposed rats and their dams in Morris water maze task were investigated. Female rats were divided into three groups and two groups exposed to 250 and 750 part per million (p...

  Abstract   Introduction: Diabetes mellitus accompanies with disturbances in learning, memory, and cognitive skills in the human society and experimental animals. Considering the beneficial antidiabetic potential of Nigella sativum (NS ), this research study was conducted to evaluate the effect of chronic consumption of NS on learning and memory in diabetic rats using passive avoidance and Y-m...

Transgenic Cry1Ac+CpTI cotton (CCRI41) is a promising cotton cultivar throughout China but side effects and especially sublethal effects of this transgenic cultivar on beneficial insects remain poorly studied. More specifically potential sublethal effects on behavioural traits of the honey bee Apis mellifera L. have not been formally assessed despite the importance of honey bees for pollination...

The major knowledge gap in assessing animal welfare is our inability to measure how animals actually feel in the different situations in which we farm them. As animals are unable to speak, we must find ways of gaining insight into their minds. Our animal welfare research at CSIRO includes a focus on understanding the cognitive abilities of animals in order to gain insight into how they feel and...

The striatum in the basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuitry is a key neural substrate that is implicated in motor balance and procedural learning. The projection neurons in the striatum are dynamically modulated by nigrostriatal dopaminergic input and intrastriatal cholinergic input. The role of intrastriatal acetylcholine (ACh) in learning behaviors, however, remains to be fully clarified. In ...

BC1 RNA is a small non-messenger RNA common in dendritic microdomains of neurons in rodents. In order to investigate its possible role in learning and behaviour, we compared controls and knockout mice from three independent founder lines established from separate embryonic stem cells. Mutant mice were healthy with normal brain morphology and appeared to have no neurological deficits. A series o...