Available online 26 September 2022, 107685

Rats can learn context-specific allocentric representations of spatial memory.

Rats can recall stable context-specific spatial locations of an event.

Rodents can also show context-specific recall of recent varying event locations.

Identical choice trials can distinguish between long-term and recency memory.

This study outlines two novel protocols for examining context specific recall in animals prior to embarking on neurobiological studies. The approach is distinct from and contrasts with studies investigating associative familiarity that depend upon procedural variations of the widely used novel object recognition task. It uses an event arena in which animals are trained across numerous sessions to search for, find and dig up reward from sandwells during sample and choice trials – a prominent spatial event for a rodent. The arena could be laid out as either of two highly distinct contexts with which the animals became fully familiar throughout training. In one protocol, the location of the correct sandwell in each context remained stable across days, whereas in the other, the correct digging location varied in a counterbalanced manner across each successive session. Thus, context-specific recall of the spatial location of successful digging during choice trials was either from a stable long-term memory or could reflect context specific spatial recency of the location where reward had been available that session. Both protocols revealed effective memory recall in choice and probe tests which, at the point of test, were procedurally identical in both cases.

Context specific recall

Episodic memory

Event arena

Allocentric spatial representation

Context-specific recency

© 2022 Published by Elsevier Inc.