Two-way shuttle box and lever-press avoidance in the spontaneously hypertensive and normotensive rat.

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Abstract
These experiments characterized behaviorally 2 strains of rat that were selectively bred for blood pressure differences. Avoidance performances of the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) and normotensive rat (WKYN) were examined under 2 conditions: a discrete-trial 2-way shuttle box avoidance procedure and a discrete-trial lever-press avoidance procedure. The WKYN strain reached a higher level of acquisition in the 2-way shuttle box task than did the SHR strain, but this difference was confounded by an initial difference in pretest avoidance rate. The SHR strain was superior in the lever-press avoidance procedure under all conditions employed. A hypothesis offered by Satinder that strains selectively bred for some behavioral feature may also differ in central arousal which will interact with task difficulty to determine performance differences was discussed. The selective breeding for high and low blood pressure probably has simultaneously influenced the behavioral properties of these 2 strains.