dissociation between performances in water maze and spontaneous alternation in balbc versus aj mice分离性能之间的水迷宫和自发交替balbc与aj老鼠.pdfVIP

Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 2012, 2, 156-161 /10.4236/jbbs.2012.22018 Published Online May 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jbbs) Dissociation between Performances in Water Maze and Spontaneous Alternation in BALB/c versus A/J Mice 1* 2 3 Julien Celestine , Arnaud Tanti , Arnaud Aubert 1INSERM U930 E2 Neurogénétique et Neurométabolomique CHRU de Tours, Hôpital Bretonneau, 2 Boulevard Tonnellé, Bât B1A, 1er Etage, 37044 Tours Cedex 9, France 2Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Université François Rabelais, Tours, France 3EA 2114, Psychologie des Ages de la Vie, Université de Tours, 3 Rue des Tanneurs, 37041 Tours Cedex 1, France * Email: julien.celestine@etu.univ-tours.fr Received March 7, 2011; revised April 15, 2011; accepted May 7, 2011 ABSTRACT Learning processes are extensively studied in behavioral neuroscience. As experimental models, Morris Water Maze (MWM) and Spontaneous Alternation (SA) represent two of the most frequently used laboratory tests to respectively address spatial vs non-spatial tasks. Several factors have been shown to impact on those learning, including strain, gen- der, apparatus, conditioning, vision, lighting conditions and stress level. In order to focus on the later, we compared the acquisition of two learning tasks (MWM and SA) in BALB/c and A/J mice, which are known as fearful and stress-sensitive strains. Here, we report that BALB/c mice exhibited higher performances than A/J mice in the MWM (i.e. spatial reference memory task), whereas A/J mice performed better in the SA (i