Differences in Y-maze retention of rats: selection according to open field activity.

Adult male Wistar rats of a heterogeneous outbred population were selected according to their open field ambulation and classified into two groups: animals showing the most activity during the first 2 min (A, fast habituation), or after the first 2 min (B, delayed habituation) of a 10 min observation period. One week later these rats were tested for foot-shock motivated brightness discrimination learning and retention in a Y-maze. It was found that group A rats exhibited higher %-savings than group B rats, whereas their learning performance was not different. Thus, our results show that rats differing in their Y-maze retention ability can be selected on the basis of certain open field measures.