PSY397H1 Chapter Notes -Circadian Rhythm
Document Summary
Study: significance of circadian phase for performance on a reward-based learning task in golden hamsters. Past research shows that disrupted circadian rhythms are linked with cognitive impairment in humans, and impaired performance in animal studies (using shifted l:d phases. ) Separate from memory acquisition and memory formation, memory recall is subject to temporal modulation. In some cases, time of day or phase is a learned attribute along with other environmental attributes (adaptive significance. ) Timing of significant events can be learned with timed rewards (anticipatory behaviour to food entrainment) Hypotheses: perceived reward value of wheel changes through the day. Cpp expression restricted to the temporal match between training and testing times. Internal representation of time is a significant attribute of context, even when time is not a discriminative cue. Hamsters were entrained for 8 days, half at zt13 and half at zt04. Those that were paired at zt13 showed place preference at zt13 (training time) but not for zt04.
