The Behavioral Assessment Core is housed in the Zeigler Research Building (ZRB) on the 9'*^ floor, close to the offices and laboratories of both Drs. Wyss and van Groen. The Core occupies approximately 2000 gross square feet of approved animal care space. Three rooms in the Core area will provide for the temporary housing of animals during the testing. A designated room is used for housing the animals in the period immediately before (1 week to 2 days) and during the testing period. There are two rooms for individual behavioral tests and a separate room for data analysis. The individual rooms are described in detail below. The Mouse Behavioral Testing Laboratory is within the Zeigler BIdg. rooms 945 and 941; ZRB 936 is used for housing mice during the testing period. Please note that there are 2 rooms for individual behavioral tests and another data analysis room in Tinsley Harhson Tower 966, next to Dr. van Groen's office). The individual rooms are described in detail below. The Behavioral Assessment Core area in ZRB Room 945 is divided into five assessment areas for evaluation of (1) SHIRPA/motor coordination and skill learning; (2) water maze learning; (3) Barnes maze learning (exchangeable with eight-arm radial maze); (4) open field and elevated plus maze and (5) 24 h activity levels. The Water Maze Area houses the water maze spatial memory test. The water maze is a 'water' exploratory task used to study spatial and cued memory. In this task, mice learn to locate an escape platform hidden under the water line of the pool to escape the water. The pool used is from San Diego Instruments. A Noldus tracking system (Noldus Information Technology Inc. Leesburg, VA) is used to quantify the exploratory behavior of mice. The water maze is available as part of the learning and memory module and is the standard spatial learning task. We also have an 8-arm insert for the water maze to convert it into a wet version of the 8-arm maze task.
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