Impaired sustained attention and error-induced stereotypy in the aged Ts65Dn mouse: A mouse model of Down syndrome and Alzheimer's disease

This study compared performance of 15- to 17-month-old Ts65Dn mice to that of littermate controls on an automated sustained attention task in which the location, onset time, and duration of brief visual cues varied unpredictably. Ts65Dn mice committed more omission errors than controls, particularly on trials with the briefest cues. Videotape data revealed that the trisomic mice attended less than controls during the period before cue presentation and engaged in stereotypic jumping and grooming immediately after making an error. These findings reveal that Ts65Dn mice are impaired in sustaining attention and exhibit heightened reactivity to committing an error, and support the validity of this mouse model for studying Down syndrome and Alzheimer's disease. The attention task, coupled with the videotape analyses of task performance, provides a useful paradigm for studying attention and reactivity to errors in mice.