Ontogeny of spatial discrimination in mice: A longitudinal analysis in the modified open-field with objects

Ricceri, Laura; Colozza, Camilla; Calamandrei, Gemma

doi:10.1002/1098-2302(200009)37:2<109::aid-dev6>3.0.co;2-d

Cited by 50 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(43 reference statements)

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“…Ricceri et al (2000) tested mice at 18, 28, 46, and 90 days old to see whether they could remember familiar objects in unfamiliar locations. Surprisingly it was reported that mice could not remember this form of associative spatial memory until they were 90 days old.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontogeny of neural circuits underlying spatial memory in the rat

Ainge¹,

Langston²

2012

Front. Neural Circuits

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Spatial memory is a well-characterized psychological function in both humans and rodents. The combined computations of a network of systems including place cells in the hippocampus, grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex and head direction cells found in numerous structures in the brain have been suggested to form the neural instantiation of the cognitive map as first described by Tolman in 1948. However, while our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying spatial representations in adults is relatively sophisticated, we know substantially less about how this network develops in young animals. In this article we briefly review studies examining the developmental timescale that these systems follow. Electrophysiological recordings from very young rats show that directional information is at adult levels at the outset of navigational experience. The systems supporting allocentric memory, however, take longer to mature. This is consistent with behavioral studies of young rats which show that spatial memory based on head direction develops very early but that allocentric spatial memory takes longer to mature. We go on to report new data demonstrating that memory for associations between objects and their spatial locations is slower to develop than memory for objects alone. This is again consistent with previous reports suggesting that adult like spatial representations have a protracted development in rats and also suggests that the systems involved in processing non-spatial stimuli come online earlier.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontogeny of neural circuits underlying spatial memory in the rat

Ainge¹,

Langston²

2012

Front. Neural Circuits

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“…This test exploits the natural propensity of rodents to explore the environment without using rewards or punishments. Previous studies have shown that naive rodents respond to a new spatial displacement or substitution by renewed exploration of the entire environment and/or by selective reinvestigation of the displaced/substituted objects (Poucet et al, 1986; Thinus-Blanc et al, 1987; Poucet, 1989, 1993; Ricceri et al, 1999, 2000, 2002; Scattoni et al, 2004; de Bartolo et al, 2010). The one-day six-session assessment of the task used in our study permits to determine pharmacological effects on short-term memory as well as on emotional reactivity of the subject.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, vehicle-treated rats exposed to either HA or LA conditions were equally able to recognize the object substitution but failed to respond to the object displacement. Interestingly, Ricceri and co-workers (Ricceri et al, 2000) showed that only 90-day-old mice were able to discriminate a spatial object rearrangement, while 46-day-old mice were not. In our study, we used young adult rats; this leaves open the possibility that the ability to discriminate a spatial change has to be still developed by rats at this age.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The endocannabinoid transport inhibitor AM404 differentially modulates recognition memory in rats depending on environmental aversiveness

Campolongo¹,

Ratano²,

Manduca³

et al. 2012

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Cannabinoid compounds may influence both emotional and cognitive processes depending on the level of environmental aversiveness at the time of drug administration. However, the mechanisms responsible for these responses remain to be elucidated. The present experiments investigated the effects induced by the endocannabinoid transport inhibitor AM404 (0.5–5 mg/kg, i.p.) on both emotional and cognitive performances of rats tested in a Spatial Open Field task and subjected to different experimental settings, named High Arousal (HA) and Low Arousal (LA) conditions. The two different experimental conditions influenced emotional reactivity independently of drug administration. Indeed, vehicle-treated rats exposed to the LA condition spent more time in the center of the arena than vehicle-treated rats exposed to the HA context. Conversely, the different arousal conditions did not affect the cognitive performances of vehicle-treated animals such as the capability to discriminate a spatial displacement of the objects or an object substitution. AM404 administration did not alter locomotor activity or emotional behavior of animals exposed to both environmental conditions. Interestingly, AM404 administration influenced the cognitive parameters depending on the level of emotional arousal: it impaired the capability of rats exposed to the HA condition to recognize a novel object while it did not induce any impairing effect in rats exposed to the LA condition. These findings suggest that drugs enhancing endocannabinoid signaling induce different effects on recognition memory performance depending on the level of emotional arousal induced by the environmental conditions.

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“…This is likely not a methodological issue, since both the Open Field Object Recognition and the Cued and Contextual Fear Conditioning task have been successfully used to detect cognitive changes in models of developmental manipulations (Crawley, 2000; Ricceri, Colozza, & Calamandrei, 2000; Ricceri, Hohmann, & Berger-Sweeney, 2002). Thus, our data suggest, that long-term learning and memory deficits are not an inevitable consequence of early stress exposure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of brief stress exposure during early postnatal development in balb/CByJ mice: I. Behavioral characterization

Höhmann¹,

Hodges²,

Beard³

et al. 2012

Developmental Psychobiology

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Early life stress has been linked to the etiology of mental health disorders. Rodent models of neonatal maternal separation stress frequently have been used to explore the long-term effects of early stress on changes in affective and cognitive behaviors. However, most current paradigms risk metabolic deprivation, due to prolonged periods of pup removal from the dam. We have developed a new paradigm in Balb/CByJ mice, that combines very brief periods of maternal separation with temperature stress to avoid the confound of nutritional deficiencies. We have also included a within-litter control group of pups that are not removed from the dam. The present experiments provide an initial behavioral characterization of this new model. We show that neonatally stressed mice display increased anxiety and aggression along with increased locomotion but decreased exploratory behavior. In contrast, littermate controls show increased exploration of novelty, compared to age-matched, colony reared controls. Behavioral changes in our briefly stressed mice substantially concur with the existing literature, except that we were unable to observe any cognitive deficits in our paradigm. However, we show that within litter control pups also sustain behavioral changes suggesting complex and long lasting interactions between different environmental factors in early postnatal life.

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Ontogeny of spatial discrimination in mice: A longitudinal analysis in the modified open-field with objects

Cited by 50 publications

References 42 publications

Ontogeny of neural circuits underlying spatial memory in the rat

Ontogeny of neural circuits underlying spatial memory in the rat

The endocannabinoid transport inhibitor AM404 differentially modulates recognition memory in rats depending on environmental aversiveness

Effects of brief stress exposure during early postnatal development in balb/CByJ mice: I. Behavioral characterization

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