EFFECT OF SLEEP ALTERING ENVIRONMENTS UPON ACQUISITION AND RETENTION OF A CONDITIONED AVOIDANCE RESPONSE IN RAT

The presence of severely restricted environmental conditions reported to produce marked alterations in sleep patterns, most notably REM sleep, had no effect upon the acquisition and the consolidation of a conditioned avoidance response in rats. However, those subjects who learned the response in the severely restricted environment showed a marked decrement in avoidance responding when retested from normal conditions. The reestablishment of the severely restricted environment was a sufficient condition for the return of performance during retest situations. Other environments produced no such effects. The correlation between changes in sleep behavior and performance was greater than the correlation between environment and performance. There is some factor (or factors) present in such environmental situations that manifests itself in two ways: external changes in sleep patterns and the development of a factor performance coupling. It is not known whether both phenomena share a common origin or whether they are independent events. The development of an environmental state dependency provides one possible explanation for some of the behavioral alterations seen following sleep-cycle disruption. The utilization of other techniques capable of influencing sleep is necessary to determine the factors relevant, in this environment, to the production of the changes noted. © 1969.