AR-News: Surprising discovery: Healthy monkeys outperform sick monkeys.

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From:primfocus at waste.org
AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses. 2004 Jan;20(1):77-89.


Impaired Performance on a Rhesus Monkey Neuropsychological Testing Battery
following Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Infection.

Weed MR, Gold LH, Polis I, Koob GF, Fox HS, Taffe MA.

Department of Neuropharmacology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla,
California.

Infection with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in macaques provides an
excellent model of AIDS including HIV-induced central nervous system (CNS)
pathology and cognitive/behavioral impairment. Recently a behavioral test
battery has been developed for macaques based on the CANTAB human
neuropsychological testing battery. As with human neuropsychological
batteries, different tasks are thought to involve different neural
substrates, and therefore performance profiles may assess function in
particular brain regions. Ten rhesus monkeys were infected with SIV after
being trained on two or more of the battery tasks addressing memory (delayed
nonmatching to sample, DNMS), spatial working memory (using a self-ordered
spatial search task, SOSS), motivation (progressive-ratio, PR), reaction
time (RT), and/or fine motor skills (bimanual motor skill, BMS). Performance
was compared to that of 9 uninfected monkeys. Overall, some aspect of
performance was impaired in all 10 monkeys following infection. Consistent
with results in human AIDS patients, individual performance was impaired
most often on battery tasks thought to be sensitive to frontostriatal
dopaminergic functioning such as SOSS, RT, and BMS. These results further
demonstrate the similarity of behavioral impairment produced by SIV and HIV
on homologous behavioral tests, and establish the utility of the testing
battery for further investigations into the CNS mechanisms of the reported
behavioral changes.


the wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. he is in front of it - axel munthe

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Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."      Margaret Mead
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