The effects of different types of pre-training on the rat's retention performance in a swim-to-platform task following administration of scopolamine

Previous research has found that centrally acting antimuscarinic drugs strongly impair the acquisition of a variety of learned behaviors in rats but have little effect on these same behaviors if training is given prior to drug treatment. We gave groups of rats different types of pre-training followed by treatment with scopolamine hydrobromide and subsequent testing on a simple swim-to-platform test. Factors such as practice in swimming without a platform to escape to, or learning to swim to a platform in a different apparatus or even to the test platform located in a different place did not protect the rats from the behavioral disruption produced by scopolamine. However, five training trials on the specific swim-to-platform task used in the retention test afforded almost complete protection against the effect of scopolamine. It appears that the protective effect of pre-training is highly specific and does not involve acquisition of some type of general rule which might survive antimuscarinic blockade.