Retention of spatial information in hippocampally damaged rats overtrained on a cartographic task

Hippocampal rats were overtrained on a cartographic task until they reached a performance equal to that of the control group. Twenty-four days later, during a retraining period, lesioned rats showed a profound retention deficit as compared to controls. However, Expt. 2 shows no retention deficit when a guidance strategy is used to acquire the spatial task. These results suggest that the hippocampus is crucial for long-term retention/consolidation of allocentric spatial information.