ArticlesBehavioral and Immunological Effects of Exogenous Butyrylcholinesterase in Rhesus Monkeys
Section snippets
Subjects
Four experimentally naive male rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), weighing between 8.9–9.4 kg at the time of the study, served as subjects. Three of the monkeys were 7 years of age at the beginning of the study and were obtained from Charles River (Wilmington, MA). One monkey was obtained from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (Bethesda, MD) and was 16 years old at the beginning of the study. The monkeys were individually housed in stainless steel cages (61 cm W × 71 cm D ×
Behavioral Performance
Unless otherwise indicated, the enzyme injection did not cause any significant effects on behavioral measures (all ps > 0.05). Administration of 27,000 IU Eq-BuChE caused no observable effect on the monkeys’ SPR performance overall or as a function of serial list position. Overall performance remained above 80% correct both before and after injection, as seen in Fig. 1A. A one-way repeated measures ANOVA did not reveal a significant main effect of days, F(4, 12) = 1.241. Figure 1B illustrates
Discussion
The SPR task generated well-controlled responding in all subjects, with high accuracy on both matching and nonmatching trials, and stable, moderate latencies. Accuracy as a function of serial position increased slightly with items later in the list, but was clearly above chance levels at all list positions. This performance is characteristic of rhesus monkeys under similar SPR procedures (13).
Administration of 27,000 and 54,000 IU of Eq-BuChE did not cause any observable gross behavioral
Acknowledgements
The opinions and assertions contained here are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the views of the Army or the Department of Defense. Throughout the study, the monkeys were maintained in compliance with the National Research Council’s Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (National Academy Press, 1996). The authors wish to thank B. P. Doctor and David Lenz for their contributing comments to the manuscript.
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