There is considerable evidence to support the idea that the environment can influence cognition and its neurobiological correlates. The cognitive impact of an organism's control or lack of control over its environment has not been systematically studied, however. The purpose of this proposal, then, is to examine the impact of chronic control or lack of control over environmental stress on escape learning, selective attention, working memory, and spatial memory. In addition, the effects of chronic controllability will be assessed on non-cognitive, physiological variables that are traditionally altered by environmental stressors, such as food intake, body weight, and plasma corticosterone. Finally, the set of studies proposed here will, examine the role of the septohippocampal system in mediating the cognitive effects of controllability. This will be accomplished by assessing the effects of lesions to several components of the septohippocampal system on escape learning after controllability training. Data obtained from the proposed experiments could have significance for future studies of the effects of chronic controllability on cognitive development, and on cognition in the aged animal. Furthermore, data obtained from the experiments proposed here could also have implications for the role of environmental factors in diseases characterized by septohippocampal dysfunction, such as Alzheimer's Disease.
