Effects of tellurium ingestion on learning capacity of the rat

✍ Scribed by Denise Dru; William F. Agnew; Ernest Greene

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1972
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 451 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0033-3158
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00423441

✦ Synopsis

Chronic consumption of tellurium results in heavy deposits of the metal in neuronal lysosomes. Acute exposure to tellurium produces noticeable toxic reactions, and long-term exposure may produce pathological changes. Previous studies have reported only mild neurological symptoms, and it is unclear as to how much functional brain damage results from uptake of the metal. The present study found rats, which had been exposed to a tellurium diet for five months, to be severely impaired in their ability to learn a sequence of behavioral tasks. The learning deficits remained severe even after exposure to tellurium had been terminated for three months. The results suggest long-term disturbance of motivational as well as discriminative capacity as a result of neural impairment.