Automated dissection of permanent effects of hippocampal or prefrontal lesions on performance at spatial, working memory and circadian timing tasks of C57BL/6 mice in IntelliCage.

Automated dissection of permanent effects of hippocampal or prefrontal lesions on performance at spatial, working memory and circadian timing tasks of C57BL/6 mice in IntelliCage. Behav Brain Res. 2017 Sep 16;: Authors: Voikar V, Krackow S, Lipp HP, Rau A, Colacicco G, Wolfer DP Abstract To evaluate permanent effects of hippocampal and prefrontal cortex lesion on spatial tasks, lesioned and sham-operated female C57BL mice were exposed to a series of conditioning schemes in IntelliCages housing 8-10 transponder-tagged mice from each treatment group. Sequential testing started at 51 to 172days after bilateral lesions and lasted for 154 and 218days in two batches of mice, respectively. Spontaneous undisturbed behavioral patterns clearly separated the three groups, hippocampals being characterized by more erratic hyperactivity, and strongly impaired circadian synchronization ability. Hippocampal lesions led to deficits in spatial passive avoidance, as well as in spatial reference and working memory tasks. Impairment was minimal in rewarded preference/reversal schemes, but prominent if behavioral responses required precise circadian timing or included punishment of wrong spatial choices. No differences between sham-operated and prefrontally lesioned subjects in conditioning success were discernible. These results corroborate the view that hippocampal dysfunction spares simple spatial learning tasks but impairs the ability to cope with con...
Source: Behavioural Brain Research - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research