Cross-generational chronic feeding of either a 5 or a 20% lyophilized Lake Huron (LH) or Lake Ontario (LO) chinook salmon diet to rats caused no observable effects on many behavioral dimensions including activity, exploration, sensorimotor function, and stereotypy. As assessed by the Morris water maze and the radial arm maze, there was no diet-induced impairment of spatial learning or long-term memory. There was no evidence that the fish diets caused an exaggerated response to food reward reduction as had been observed previously for rats fed Oswego area Lake Ontario salmon. Effects of the fish diets with the exception of one statistically significant but probably meaningless effect on the Morris water maze for females were found only for male rats and only for males who ate the 20% diet. F1 male rats were reluctant to traverse a runway for a single pellet reward. Performance of the reference/working memory version of the radial arm maze was affected for the F1 LO-20 rats and for the F2 LH-20 rats. Until further research is conducted it would be unwise to ignore indications that male rats may show some effect of chronic consumption of the highest concentration of these diets, particularly on tasks that require intact frontocortical dopamine function.
Copyright 1998 Academic Press.