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Apparatus design and behavioural testing protocol for the evaluation of spatial working memory in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze

Spatial working memory can be assessed in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze test. The T-maze is a T-shaped apparatus featuring a stem (start arm) and two lateral goal arms (left and right arms). The procedure is based on the natural tendency of rodents to prefer exploring a novel arm o...

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Autores principales: d’Isa, Raffaele, Comi, Giancarlo, Leocani, Letizia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34707108
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00402-7
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author d’Isa, Raffaele
Comi, Giancarlo
Leocani, Letizia
author_facet d’Isa, Raffaele
Comi, Giancarlo
Leocani, Letizia
author_sort d’Isa, Raffaele
collection PubMed
description Spatial working memory can be assessed in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze test. The T-maze is a T-shaped apparatus featuring a stem (start arm) and two lateral goal arms (left and right arms). The procedure is based on the natural tendency of rodents to prefer exploring a novel arm over a familiar one, which induces them to alternate the choice of the goal arm across repeated trials. During the task, in order to successfully alternate choices across trials, an animal has to remember which arm had been visited in the previous trial, which makes spontaneous alternation T-maze an optimal test for spatial working memory. As this test relies on a spontaneous behaviour and does not require rewards, punishments or pre-training, it represents a particularly useful tool for cognitive evaluation, both time-saving and animal-friendly. We describe here in detail the apparatus and the protocol, providing representative results on wild-type healthy mice.
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spelling pubmed-85511592021-10-28 Apparatus design and behavioural testing protocol for the evaluation of spatial working memory in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze d’Isa, Raffaele Comi, Giancarlo Leocani, Letizia Sci Rep Article Spatial working memory can be assessed in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze test. The T-maze is a T-shaped apparatus featuring a stem (start arm) and two lateral goal arms (left and right arms). The procedure is based on the natural tendency of rodents to prefer exploring a novel arm over a familiar one, which induces them to alternate the choice of the goal arm across repeated trials. During the task, in order to successfully alternate choices across trials, an animal has to remember which arm had been visited in the previous trial, which makes spontaneous alternation T-maze an optimal test for spatial working memory. As this test relies on a spontaneous behaviour and does not require rewards, punishments or pre-training, it represents a particularly useful tool for cognitive evaluation, both time-saving and animal-friendly. We describe here in detail the apparatus and the protocol, providing representative results on wild-type healthy mice. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-10-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8551159/ /pubmed/34707108 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00402-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
d’Isa, Raffaele
Comi, Giancarlo
Leocani, Letizia
Apparatus design and behavioural testing protocol for the evaluation of spatial working memory in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze
title Apparatus design and behavioural testing protocol for the evaluation of spatial working memory in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze
title_full Apparatus design and behavioural testing protocol for the evaluation of spatial working memory in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze
title_fullStr Apparatus design and behavioural testing protocol for the evaluation of spatial working memory in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze
title_full_unstemmed Apparatus design and behavioural testing protocol for the evaluation of spatial working memory in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze
title_short Apparatus design and behavioural testing protocol for the evaluation of spatial working memory in mice through the spontaneous alternation T-maze
title_sort apparatus design and behavioural testing protocol for the evaluation of spatial working memory in mice through the spontaneous alternation t-maze
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34707108
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00402-7
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