Hippocampal damage (HPC) disrupts the ability to find one's way in an environment (wayfind). Humans and animals with such damage may be left without effective wayfinding strategies and spatial disorientation results. A single cue decreases disorientation in rats; however, they are impaired when compared to controls. We hypothesized that familiarity with a cue would enhance the ability of rats with HPC damage to use the cue to locate a hidden platform in the Morris water test. After preoperative familiarity with the cue (n = 21) or handling only (n = 17), rats were given electrolytic bilateral HPC lesions or sham surgery for controls. All rats were tested for four days with the cue marking the platform location. On day 1, univariate ANOVA demonstrated that rats with HPC lesions familiar with the cue (FB) had shorter swim times than rats with HPC lesions unfamiliar with the cue (UB) (X = 10.31 $pm$ 2.2 vs 46.72 $pm$ 7.5 seconds, p $<$.05) and less directional heading error (X = 31.98 $pm$ 3.4 vs 57.92 $pm$ 4.0 degrees, p $<$.05). FB rats continued to perform more efficiently than UB rats across the remaining test days. The data suggest that the UB group was impaired in learning the cue task. Importantly, no significant differences were found between FB animals and familiar controls.

The effect of familiarity was then tested with a distracter in the testing environment. The same protocol was used for 47 male rats, except that FB rats were introduced to the distracter either on test days 1 (FB1) or 3 (FB3), and UB rats on day 3 (UB3). No significant differences were found for FB1 or FB3 rats and their respective controls. FB1 and FB3 rats displayed distractibility on introduction to the distracter, with FB1 rats showing faster recovery. No distraction was seen with UB3 rats. Profile analysis demonstrated a significant lesion effect (F = 4.54$sb(□6,7) □$p =.03). ANOVA indicated that UB3 rats were impaired on the task compared to FB1 rats on days 3-7 (p $<$.05). We conclude that cue familiarity enhances single cue navigation following hippocampal damage and remains effective in the presence of a distracter.