Light deprivation-related changes of strategy selection in the radial arm maze.

During the early postnatal age environmental signals underlie the development of sensory systems. The visual system is considered as an appropriate system to evaluate role of sensory experience in postnatal development of sensory systems. This study was made to assess the effect of visual deprivation on strategy of arm selection in navigation of radial arm maze. Six-week-old light- (LR, control) and dark-reared (DR) rats were trained for correct choices and adjacent arms tasks. Our results showed that both the LR and DR animals equally selected correct arms. In the adjacent arms task, however, the control group significantly outperformed the DR animals. While the LR males and females displayed some differences in performing the tasks, no sex dependency was found in the performance of the DR group. These findings indicate that the lack of visual experience is likely to influence the strategy selection as well as sex differences. Thus the difference in the performance of LR and DR animals seems to be due to the male rather than female behavior.