behavior/neurological
• heterozygotes exhibit impairment in the water-finding task associated with latent learning performance; training fails to shorten the finding and drinking latencies, despite normal locomotor activity and exploratory behavior
• post-training latencies for both finding and drinking performances are restored by desipramine-induced stimulation of noradrenergic activity
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• heterozygotes exhibit mild impairment in long-term memory formation in three distinct forms of associative learning (active avoidance, cued fear conditioning, and conditioned taste aversion)
• associative learning deficits are restored by desipramine-induced stimulation of noradrenergic activity
• notablty, spatial learning and hippocampal long-term potentiation remain unaffected
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homeostasis/metabolism
• heterozygotes show a moderate reduction of noradrenaline levels in brains regions, including the frontal cortex, midbrain, hypothalamus, hippocampus and pons medulla, to 73%-80% of wild-type levels
• measurement of extracellular noradrenaline levels in the frontal cortex by microdialysis indicates a significant reduction in high K+-evoked noradrenaline release
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