Research reportDeterminants of novel object and location recognition during development

•Object and spatial novelty recognition is evident around the time of weaning.•Spatial recognition requires NMDA receptor function in juvenile rats.•Neonatal alcohol exposure does not impair novel object or spatial recognition.

In the novel object recognition (OR) paradigm, rats are placed in an arena where they encounter two sample objects during a familiarization phase. A few minutes later, they are returned to the same arena and are presented with a familiar object and a novel object. The object location recognition (OL) variant involves the same familiarization procedure but during testing one of the familiar objects is placed in a novel location. Normal adult rats are able to perform both the OR and OL tasks, as indicated by enhanced exploration of the novel vs. the familiar test item. Rats with hippocampal lesions perform the OR but not OL task indicating a role of spatial memory in OL [1]. Recently, these tasks have been used to study the ontogeny of spatial memory but the literature has yielded conflicting results [2,3]. The current experiments add to this literature by: (1) behaviorally characterizing these paradigms in postnatal day (PD) 21, 26 and 31-day-old rats; (2) examining the role of NMDA systems in OR vs. OL; and (3) investigating the effects of neonatal alcohol exposure on both tasks. Results indicate that normal-developing rats are able to perform OR and OL by PD21, with greater novelty exploration in the OR task at each age. Second, memory acquisition in the OR but not OL task requires NMDA receptor function in juvenile rats. Lastly, neonatal alcohol exposure does not disrupt performance in either task. Implications for the ontogeny of incidental spatial learning and its disruption by developmental alcohol exposure are discussed.