Enemy avoidance task: A novel behavioral paradigm for assessing spatial avoidance of a moving subject

Behavioral Tests for Evaluation of Information Processing and Cognitive Deficits in Rodent Animal Models of Neuropsychiatric Disorders

“…The Carousel maze (previously also termed active allothetic place avoidance (AAPA) or active place avoidance task (Stuchlik et al, 2004;Stuchlik and Vales, 2005;Vales et al, 2006, Stuchlik et al, 20092008) or Room+/Arena-task (Weiserska et al, 2005;Kubik and Fenton 2005) is a variant of the place avoidance task Fenton et al, 1998, Cimadevilla et al, 2000a2001a,b,c), in which a rodent (typically a rat, but the maze can be used with mice as well; Cimadevilla et al, 2001a) is placed on a smooth circular arena and required to avoid a directly imperceptible to-beavoided sector. In the Carousel maze, the experimental arena slowly continuously rotates (1 rpm) in a lighted room and the to-be-avoided sector (60 deg) is defined in the fixed position in the coordinate frame of the room.…”

“…4. In particular, the Carousel maze has proved to be a suitable test of altered behavior in animal models of brain disorders, mainly schizophrenia (a pharmacological model induced by systemic treatment with a psychotomimetic MK-801, a non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist) and has been used in several animal model studies todate (Stuchlik et al, 2004;Stuchlik and Vales, 2005;Vales et al, 2006, Bubenikova-Valesova et al, 2008, Stuchlik et al, 2009. Notably, the task was not found to be sensitive to an electrolytic lesion of the posterior parietal cortex (Svoboda et al, 2008), but is dependent on an intact retrosplenial cortex (RSC; Wesierska et al, 2009).…”

“…This allows for interpretation of data in terms of the cognitive coordination hypothesis (see above) rather than mere acquisition of room-based place avoidance on the rotating arena. We propose that pure acquisition of the Carousel maze task such as used in Stuchlik et al, 2004;Vales et al, 2006;and Stuchlik et al, 2009 represents a mixture of contribution in allothetic learning, skill learning (Dockery and Weiserska, 2010) and coordination of arena and room frames (Wesierska et al, 2005, Kubik and Fenton, 2005, Kubik et al, 2006. It is recommended to pursue a pre-exposure (habituation) to the environment.…”

“…The enemy avoidance task in rats was first introduced by Telensky (2009) and the task can be defined as avoidance of a moving conspecific (Telensky et al, 2009) or a mobile object . Quite different from the classic avoidance that a rodent would exert facing a real predator or cat odor, the avoidance behavior is reinforced by completely artificial, but well-controlled and reproducible aversive stimulus -electric footshock.…”

“…The first study (Telensky et al, 2009) used a conspecific as the moving object. A laboratory rat (subject) was trained to avoid another rat (enemy), while searching for small pasta pellets dispensed onto an experimental arena.…”