Recent developments demonstrate that mouse forward and reverse genetic approaches will play an important role in unraveling the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying behavior. An important aspect of this effort will be the standardization and automation of many of the key behavioral tasks used in these studies. Results with standardized tests can be compared more easily between laboratories, and automation of these tasks will allow high-throughput testing of large numbers of subjects required for behavioral screens of mutant mice. Here, we propose to automate two key procedures that can be used to test a number of behaviors, including learning and memory. The first is fear conditioning, a Pavlovian task where animals learn to fear a conditioned stimulus (context, tone) previously associated with an unconditioned stimulus such as a foot shock. The second i8s social recognition, an ethologically-based task that takes advantage of an animal s ability to recognize and remember other conspecifics. In addition to automating these two tasks, and testing their usefulness with a number of mutant mice, and mouse inbred strains, we also propose to determine the involvement of specific brain regions in the various components of these two tests. The results from the neuroanatomical lesion experiments will provide valuable information to interpret the deficits of mutants revealed in these tasks. The studies proposed here will not only be useful in automating and standardizing two very powerful behavioral procedures, but they will also generate interesting new information about molecular and neuroanatomical substrates of memory formation.
| Matynia, Anna; Anagnostaras, Stephan G; Wiltgen, Brian J et al. (2008) A high through-put reverse genetic screen identifies two genes involved in remote memory in mice. PLoS One 3:e2121 |
| Wiltgen, B J; Sanders, M J; Behne, N S et al. (2001) Sex differences, context preexposure, and the immediate shock deficit in Pavlovian context conditioning with mice. Behav Neurosci 115:26-32 |
