Journal
BEHAVIOURAL BRAIN RESEARCH
Volume 294, Issue -, Pages 224-233Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2015.08.004
Keywords
Young rats; Morris water maze; Inferior learners; Superior learners; Novel object recognition memory impairment; Hippocampus; Aging; Cognitive impairment
Categories
Funding
- University of Wisconsin Graduate School, School of Medicine and Public Health and Department of Neurology
- University of Wisconsin Neuroscience Training Program [NIH/NIGMS T32GM007507]
- NSF National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowship
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The Morris water maze (MWM) behavioral paradigm is commonly used to measure spatial learning and memory in rodents. It is widely accepted that performance in the MWM declines with age. However, young rats ubiquitously perform very well on established versions of the water maze, suggesting that more challenging tasks may be required to reveal subtle differences in young animals. Therefore, we have used a one-day water maze and novel object recognition to test whether more sensitive paradigms of memory in young animals could identify subtle cognitive impairments early in life that might become accentuated later with senescence. We have found that these two tasks reliably separate young rats into inferior and superior learners, are highly correlated, and that performance on these tasks early in life is predictive of performance at 12 months of age. Furthermore, we have found that repeated training in this task selectively improves the performance of inferior learners, suggesting that behavioral training from an early age may provide a buffer against age-related cognitive decline. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available