Hippocampus

Study by Warren & Juraska (1997)

• Methods:

  • animals received pretraining trials on either the spatial task or the cued task
  • on the day of the experiment, females in late proestrus or late estrus received 8 trials, 1 hour break, followed by 8 additional trials
  • how quickly did they find the platform?

• Results:

  • on spatial task, late estrus females found platform more quickly than late proestrus females
  • on the cued task, late proestrus females found platform more quickly than late estrus

• Conclusions:

  • the increase in estrogen during late proestrus (when there is an increase in dendritic spines) is associated with decreased performance on the spatial task, but increased performance on the cued task

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