An overview of the tasks used to test working memory in rodents

Dudchenko, Paul A.

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2004.09.002

Cited by 406 publications

(341 citation statements)

References 75 publications

(80 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

331

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In rodent tasks, working memory defines a cognitive process to store and manipulate information relevant only for a short period of time or within a session (Dudchenko, 2004). Our present observations support a critical role of mGluR7 in spatial working memory functioning.…”

Section: Working Memory Defectssupporting

confidence: 76%

Concomitant Deficits in Working Memory and Fear Extinction Are Functionally Dissociated from Reduced Anxiety in Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 7-Deficient Mice

Callaerts-Végh

Beckers

Ball

et al. 2006

Journal of Neuroscience

149

124

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Metabotropic glutamate receptor 7 (mGluR7), a receptor with a distinct brain distribution and a putative role in anxiety, emotional responding, and spatial working memory, could be an interesting therapeutic target for fear and anxiety disorders. mGluR7-deficient (mGluR7 Ϫ/Ϫ ) mice showed essentially normal performance in tests for neuromotor and exploratory activity and passive avoidance learning but prominent anxiolytic behavior in two anxiety tests. They showed a delayed learning curve during the acquisition of the hidden-platform water maze, and three interspersed probe trials indicated that mGluR7 Ϫ/Ϫ mice were slower to acquire spatial information. Working memory in the water maze task and the radial arm maze was impaired in mGluR7 Ϫ/Ϫ mice compared with mGluR7 ϩ/ϩ . mGluR7 Ϫ/Ϫ mice also displayed a higher resistance to extinction of fear-elicited response suppression in a conditioned emotional response protocol. In a non-fear-based water maze protocol, mGluR7 Ϫ/Ϫ mice displayed similar delayed extinction. These observed behavioral changes are probably not attributable to changes in AMPA or NMDA receptor function because expression levels of AMPA and NMDA receptors were unaltered. Extinction of conditioned fear is an active and context-dependent form of inhibitory learning and an experimental model for therapeutic fear reduction. It appears to depend on glutamatergic and higher-level brain functions similar to those involved in spatial working memory but functionally dissociated from those that mediate constitutional responses in anxiety tests.

show abstract

Section: Working Memory Defectssupporting

confidence: 76%

Concomitant Deficits in Working Memory and Fear Extinction Are Functionally Dissociated from Reduced Anxiety in Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 7-Deficient Mice

Callaerts-Végh

Beckers

Ball

et al. 2006

Journal of Neuroscience

149

124

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Ablation of neurogenesis improved performance in working memory tasks, but only in situations where animals needed to ignore or forget conflicting nonrelevant information from previous trials (18). The altered performance in neurogenesisdeficient animals appears to indicate a lack of sensitivity to memory interference.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Paradoxical influence of hippocampal neurogenesis on working memory

Saxe¹,

Malleret²,

Vronskaya³

et al. 2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

211

165

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To explore the function of adult hippocampal neurogenesis, we ablated cell proliferation by using two independent and complementary methods: (i) a focal hippocampal irradiation and (ii) an inducible and reversible genetic elimination of neural progenitor cells. Previous studies using these methods found a weakening of contextual fear conditioning but no change in spatial reference memory, suggesting a supportive role for neurogenesis in some, but not all, hippocampal-dependent memory tasks. In the present study, we examined hippocampal-dependent and -independent working memory using different radial maze tasks. Surprisingly, ablating neurogenesis caused an improvement of hippocampaldependent working memory when repetitive information was presented in a single day. These findings suggest that adult-born cells in the dentate gyrus have different, and in some cases, opposite roles in distinct types of memory.hippocampus ͉ irradiation ͉ radial maze ͉ interference

show abstract

“…Rodents express spatial working memory, but navigation tasks do not constrain the modality or entity of stored information; choices could even be held in memory through body posture and other nonneuronal mechanisms (8,21). Can rodents perform parametric working memory; that is, can they store a stimulus not according to its identity or quality (22) but only by its position along the scale of a single sensory dimension?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tactile perception and working memory in rats and humans

Fassihi

Akrami

Esmaeili

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

101

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Primates can store sensory stimulus parameters in working memory for subsequent manipulation, but until now, there has been no demonstration of this capacity in rodents. Here we report tactile working memory in rats. Each stimulus is a vibration, generated as a series of velocity values sampled from a normal distribution. To perform the task, the rat positions its whiskers to receive two such stimuli, "base" and "comparison," separated by a variable delay. It then judges which stimulus had greater velocity SD. In analogous experiments, humans compare two vibratory stimuli on the fingertip. We demonstrate that the ability of rats to hold base stimulus information (for up to 8 s) and their acuity in assessing stimulus differences overlap the performance demonstrated by humans. This experiment highlights the ability of rats to perceive the statistical structure of vibrations and reveals their previously unknown capacity to store sensory information in working memory.

show abstract

An overview of the tasks used to test working memory in rodents

Cited by 406 publications

References 75 publications

Concomitant Deficits in Working Memory and Fear Extinction Are Functionally Dissociated from Reduced Anxiety in Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 7-Deficient Mice

Concomitant Deficits in Working Memory and Fear Extinction Are Functionally Dissociated from Reduced Anxiety in Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 7-Deficient Mice

Paradoxical influence of hippocampal neurogenesis on working memory

Tactile perception and working memory in rats and humans

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About