Effect of light deprivation and sex on the strategy selection of rats in radial maze

Introduction: During the early postnatal age environmental signals underlie development of sensory systems. The visual system is considered as an appropriate system for evaluation of the role of sensory experience in postnatal development of sensory systems. Materials and Methods: Light (LR-control) and dark reared (DR) 40 days old rats were used for adjacent arms tasks. The animals were subjected to two trials each day on a radial arm maze. The experiments were performed in 3 stages. In the first stage, the rats had to search the maze with while all arms were baited. During the second and third stages, only 4 adjacent arms were baited, however, in the third stage the place of the adjacent arms was changed between the daily trials. The findings were considered for 1- the number of correct entries and 2- selection of the adjacent arms. Results: Our results indicated that both the LR and DR animals equally entered correct arms. In the adjacent arms task, however, the control group significantly outperformed the DR animals. Concerning sex dependency of the tasks while, at least partly, the LR males and females differently searched the maze the DR group represented no sex differences in their performances. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the lack of visual experience is likely to influence the strategy selection and sex differences as well. Also the difference between performances of the LR and DR animals is probably due to the males rather than females behavior.