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Abstract:
Abstract: The Morris water task is considered an ideal task
to assess hippocampus functioning in nonhumans. In this task,
rodents are required to use spatial relations to swim to the
location of a hidden platform. Rodents with hippocampus damage
display deficits in navigating to this platform. It was of interest
to test whether humans with hippocampus damage would show similar
impairments in a virtual version of this task. Ten patients who had
undergone either a unilateral amygdalohippocampectomy or anterior
temporal lobectomy were tested. Age-matched patients who had
undergone extra-temporal lobe tumor resections and age-matched
controls were also tested. Participants were placed in a virtual
pool and used a joystick to swim to a hidden platform. After 20
trials of training, a probe trial was conducted in which the
platform was removed from the water, and the patient was allowed to
search for it for 30 seconds. The patients with hippocampus damage
showed spatial memory impairments as evidenced by significantly
slower times to find the platform. In the probe trial, these
patients show no preference for the area of the pool where the
platform was previously located. The patients who had the tumor
resections did not differ on any measure from the controls.
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