Auditory Discrimination under Increased Pressures of Helium-Oxygen and Air

Abstract

Rats were trained on a conditional discrimination task to differentially respond to the presence or absence of an auditory stimulus in a background of noise. Performance on the discrimination task was impaired during exposure to increased pressures of simulated depths in a hyperbaric chamber. The extent of performance impairment was determined by the particular depth. No systematic differences on the discrimination task were found between compressed air and helium-oxygen as the breathing mixtures at depth.