Comparison of spatial learning in the partially baited radial-arm maze task between commonly used rat strains: Wistar, Spargue-Dawley, Long-Evans, and outcrossed Wistar/Sprague-Dawley

Gökçek-Saraç, Çiğdem; Wesierska, M; Jakubowska-Doğru, Ewa

doi:10.3758/s13420-014-0163-9

Cited by 20 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…These outperform Sprague–Dawley and Long–Evans rats, even though albino Wistar rats are known to have worse visual functions than pigmented rats (including lower visual acuity and impaired vision). Such findings indicate that in small rodents, high visual acuity is not required for successful performance in visuospatial tasks where the visual cues are at a distance of 1.5–2 m (Gökçek-Saraç et al 2015 ). The most popular strains used for BM are Wistar rats (Gawel et al 2016 ; Trofimiuk and Braszko 2011 ; Vargas-Lopez et al 2011 ) and Sprague–Dawley rats (McAteer et al 2016 ; Locklear and Kritzer 2014 ).…”

Section: Test Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessment of spatial learning and memory in the Barnes maze task in rodents—methodological consideration

Gaweł

Gibuła

Marszałek‐Grabska

et al. 2018

Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Arch Pharmacol

184

149

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Among the methods valuable for assessing spatial learning and memory impairments in rodents, the Barnes maze (BM) task deserves special attention. It is based on the assumption that the animal placed into the aversive environment should learn and remember the location of an escape box located below the surface of the platform. Different phases of the task allow to measure spatial learning, memory retrieval, and cognitive flexibility. Herein, we summarize current knowledge about the BM procedure, its variations and critical parameters measured in the task. We highlight confounding factors which should be taken into account when conducting BM task, discussing briefly its advantages and disadvantages. We then propose an extended version of the BM protocol which allows to measure different aspects of spatial learning and memory in rodents. We believe that this review will help to standardize the BM methodology across the laboratories and eventually make the results comparable.

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Section: Test Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In summary, strain-related differences in animal performance in cognitive tasks cannot be underestimated since such differences may affect the outcomes of the experiment (Gökçek-Saraç et al 2015 ).…”

Section: Test Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of spatial learning and memory in the Barnes maze task in rodents—methodological consideration

Gaweł

Gibuła

Marszałek‐Grabska

et al. 2018

Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Arch Pharmacol

184

149

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The aim of the present study was to merge the rich literature of rat social behavior studies [ 26 – 33 ], with the demand for high-throughput behavioral assays amenable to preclinical ASD models [ 34 ]. We elected to establish our behavioral testing approach in two commonly used strains of laboratory rats—the albino Sprague-Dawley (SD) and pigmented Long-Evans (LE) that exhibit strain specific patterns of behavior [ 35 – 39 ]. Numerous studies have documented differences in social interactions among rat strains [ 40 , 41 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral Phenotyping of Juvenile Long-Evans and Sprague-Dawley Rats: Implications for Preclinical Models of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Weir

Silverman

et al. 2016

PLoS ONE

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The laboratory rat is emerging as an attractive preclinical animal model of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), allowing investigators to explore genetic, environmental and pharmacological manipulations in a species exhibiting complex, reciprocal social behavior. The present study was carried out to compare two commonly used strains of laboratory rats, Sprague-Dawley (SD) and Long-Evans (LE), between the ages of postnatal day (PND) 26–56 using high-throughput behavioral phenotyping tools commonly used in mouse models of ASD that we have adapted for use in rats. We detected few differences between young SD and LE strains on standard assays of exploration, sensorimotor gating, anxiety, repetitive behaviors, and learning. Both SD and LE strains also demonstrated sociability in the 3-chamber social approach test as indexed by spending more time in the social chamber with a constrained age/strain/sex matched novel partner than in an identical chamber without a partner. Pronounced differences between the two strains were, however, detected when the rats were allowed to freely interact with a novel partner in the social dyad paradigm. The SD rats in this particular testing paradigm engaged in play more frequently and for longer durations than the LE rats at both juvenile and young adult developmental time points. Results from this study that are particularly relevant for developing preclinical ASD models in rats are threefold: (i) commonly utilized strains exhibit unique patterns of social interactions, including strain-specific play behaviors, (ii) the testing environment may profoundly influence the expression of strain-specific social behavior and (iii) simple, automated measures of sociability may not capture the complexities of rat social interactions.

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“…With regard to this last point, a previous study in our lab, using the same cues, apparatus and level of illumination as in the present study, showed that the performance of Wistar rats in a reference spatial memory task was more affected by a change in the general shape of the experimental room than by the removal of salient cues (Ramos, ). Third, that high visual acuity is not a prerequisite to successful performance in spatial tasks has been directly demonstrated in a recent study (Gökçek‐Saraç et al, ). In this study different rat strains, albino (Wistar, Sprague‐Dawley), pigmented (Long‐Evans) and outcrossed (Wistar/Sprague‐Dawley) were compared in allocentric visual‐spatial learning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Perirhinal cortex involvement in allocentric spatial learning in the rat: Evidence from doubly marked tasks

Ramos

2017

Hippocampus

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It has recently been suggested that the different cortices of the medial temporal lobe support a mixture of object and spatial processing functions, challenging the anterior model that emphasized a strict functional differentiation between regions. However, for some structures, the perirhinal cortex (Prh) for example, a number of studies using lesion methods have shown a profound deficit exclusively in tasks involving object learning but not allocentric spatial learning. It may be that the learning paradigms used in previous studies have not been sensitive enough to detect a possible allocentric deficit in Prh-lesioned animals. To examine whether Prh lesions critically affect allocentric spatial learning, experimental and control rats were trained in two doubly marked navigation tasks. In experiment 1, the use of either one of two different memory systems, allocentric versus egocentric, made it possible to locate the goal arm in a four-arm radial maze. In experiment 2, rats had to choose between an allocentric versus a S-R/habit strategy, both of which predicted the location of the goal arm. Results showed that both experimental and control animals learned both navigation tasks well, reaching the same level of performance at the end of training. However, a probe test performed 1 day after the learning ended revealed that Prh-damaged animals learned both tasks predominantly using a non-allocentric strategy. Specifically, in lesioned subjects the percentage of egocentric correct responses (experiment 1) and the percentage of habit-based correct responses (experiment 2) was significantly higher than in the control rats. On the other hand, in both experiments, control rats in the probe test presented a significantly higher number of allocentric correct responses than the lesioned subjects. These results clearly suggest that Prh is normally needed for using allocentric strategies in order to solve a navigation problem. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Comparison of spatial learning in the partially baited radial-arm maze task between commonly used rat strains: Wistar, Spargue-Dawley, Long-Evans, and outcrossed Wistar/Sprague-Dawley

Cited by 20 publications

References 50 publications

Assessment of spatial learning and memory in the Barnes maze task in rodents—methodological consideration

Assessment of spatial learning and memory in the Barnes maze task in rodents—methodological consideration

Behavioral Phenotyping of Juvenile Long-Evans and Sprague-Dawley Rats: Implications for Preclinical Models of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Perirhinal cortex involvement in allocentric spatial learning in the rat: Evidence from doubly marked tasks

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