Effects of paradoxical sleep deprivation on two-way avoidance acquisition

Immediately following 72 hrs of paradoxical sleep (PS) deprivation, Wistar rats were given a shuttle-box avoidance task consisting of 50 trials. At an interval of 6 days retention was assessed through a reacquisition session of 20 trials. In a first experiment, the pendulum technique was employed for PS deprivation and its effects were compared with those produced by the conventional watertank technique. The first technique consists of arousing animals from sleep before PS can arise, by swinging their cages in a way that produces postural imbalance at regular intervals. A moving pendulum just not causing imbalance in the animals served as control for this technique. As control for the watertank technique the large platform was chosen. Shuttle-box avoidance was greatly impaired during the second half of the acquisition session in both platform conditions as compared to both pendulum conditions. A relatively small deficit was found toward the end of the session in both PS deprivation conditions as compared to both control conditions. No differences in avoidance were established during retention testing, suggesting that performance rather than learning deficits occurred during acquisition. In a second experiment, the multiple platform was used for PS deprivation. This modified version of the watertank technique also disrupted performance during shuttle-box avoidance acquisition. However, this effect appeared to be less pronounced than the effect found in the classical platform condition of Experiment 1. It is concluded that the performance deficit induced by both the classical and the multiple platform condition was mainly due to nonspecific effects.