Dorsolateral striatal lesions impair navigation based on landmark-goal vectors but facilitate spatial learning based on a “cognitive map”

In three experiments, the nature of the interaction between multiple memory systems in rats solving a variation of a spatial task in the water maze was investigated. Throughout training rats were able to find a submerged platform at a fixed distance and direction from an intramaze landmark by learning a landmark-goal vector. Extramaze cues were also available for standard place learning, or “cognitive mapping,” but these cues were valid only within each session, as the position of the platform moved around the pool between sessions together with the intramaze landmark. Animals could therefore learn the position of the platform by taking the consistent vector from the landmark across sessions or by rapidly encoding the new platform position on each session with reference to the extramaze cues. Excitotoxic lesions of the dorsolateral striatum impaired vector-based learning but facilitated cognitive map-based rapid place learning when the extramaze cues were relatively poor (Experiment 1) but not when they were more salient (Experiments 2 and 3). The way the lesion effects interacted with cue availability is consistent with the idea that the memory systems involved in the current navigation task are functionally cooperative yet associatively competitive in nature.