Hypoxia-ischemia (HI) refers to reduced blood oxygenation and/or diminished amount of blood perfusing the brain, and represents a common cause of injury to the premature/very low birthweight (VLBW) infant brain. Significant number of premature/VLBW infants go on to experience cognitive/behavioral deficits, including language impairments. Parallel research has demonstrated that auditory processing deficits may play a causal role in the development of language impairments, and auditory processing deficits have been observed in premature/VLBW populations. Based on convergent evidence, we performed behavioral evaluations of a rat model of perinatal HI injury, and have reported deficits on rapid auditory tasks and spatial learning/memory tasks for male rats with early unilateral HI injury (McClure et al., SFN, 2003). In the current study, we explore the behavioral consequences of a bilateral HI injury in male rats. Results show that bilateral HI subjects performed worse than shams and unilateral HI subjects on ...