PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Thomas Doublet
AU  - Antoine Ghestem
AU  - Christophe Bernard
TI  - Deficit in observational learning in experimental epilepsy
AID  - 10.1101/2022.06.28.497932
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.06.28.497932
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/07/02/2022.06.28.497932.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/07/02/2022.06.28.497932.full
AB  - Individuals use the observation of a conspecific to learn new behaviors and skills in many species. Whether observational learning is affected in epilepsy is not known. Using the pilocarpine rat model of epilepsy, we assessed learning by observation in a spatial task.The task involves a naïve animal observing a demonstrator animal seeking a reward at a specific spatial location. After five observational sessions, the observer is allowed to explore the rewarded space and look for the reward.Although control observer rats succeed in finding the reward when allowed to explore the rewarded space, epileptic animals fail. However, epileptic animals are able to successfully learn the location of the reward through their own experience after several trial sessions.Thus, epileptic animals show a clear deficit in learning by observation. This result may be clinically relevant, in particular in children who strongly rely on observational learning.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.