• Overview
• Quality Assurance
• Anxiety
• Depression & Sexual Dysfunction
• Cognition & ADHD
• Psychosis & Mania
• Phenotyping & Breeding
• Other
  • in vivo Microdialysis
  • Neurological & Other Disorders
  • Neuromorphology
  • Obesity
  • Pain
  • Radiotelemetry
  • Index of Tests

Cognition & ADHD

Cognitive impairment, especially impaired information-processing and inattention, are symptoms of schizophrenia giving rise to cognitive disorganization and sensory inhibition. Other types of cognitive impairment, namely, recognition and executive function, are seen in other disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington disease.

PowerPoint Presentation outlining additional validation data for Cognition

Different aspects of learning and memory can be assessed in rodents with the following tests:

• Morris Water Maze
  The Morris water maze test assesses hippocampal-dependent spatial learning and memory. It consists of a water pool with a hidden escape platform which the subject must learn to locate using visual cues.
  
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• Holeboard
  The holeboard test evaluates exploration, working, and reference memory by using an appetitive reward. As with the morris water maze, this test evaluates, among other functions, the role of the hippocampus in spatial information processing.
  
  
• Novel Object Recognition
  This test, conducted in an open field chamber, exposes the animal to both a familiar and novel object. The difference in time spent exploring each object during the test trial is used as an index of recognition of the previously explored object.
  
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• Active Avoidance
  Active avoidance is a test that assesses memory for a negative reinforcer (a mild electric shock) in a certain context. Good memory recall is shown when the animal avoids the aversive location.
• Barnes Maze
  The barnes maze is a test that measures spatial learning and memory. Food deprived mice receive reinforcement by escaping an aversive bright light environment to a target box in a dark recessed chamber.
• Fear Conditioning
  Fear conditioning is a test that measures memory for an association between a negative reinforcer and either a cue or a context. Contextual fear conditioning involves the hippocampus while cued fear conditioning does not.
• Peak Procedure (Time Perception)
  ADHD, schizophrenia, depression and other psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders affect time perception and the processes that underlie steady state performance in a temporal task, such as attention, motivation, and short and long term memory. This test uses an appetitive reward delivered at a fixed time to food-deprived mice to assess their ability to learn and reproduce this temporal response.
• Place Recognition/Y-Maze
  Place recognition is a two-trial recognition memory, which relies on the innate tendency of a mouse to explore a novel environment. Several aspects of behavior can be measured in this test, including exploration, response to novelty, and spatial recognition memory.
• Radial Arm Maze/Delayed Non-Matching to Position
  The delayed non-matching to position (DNMTP) procedure is frequently used to evaluate working memory. This procedure assesses the animals’ ability to distinguish a novel stimulus, in this case a novel arm on the radial arm maze from a familiar stimulus following a single presentation. Recognition of the novel stimulus results in an appetitive food reward.
• Spontaneous Alternation
  An ethologically based test in which mice are assessed for their ability to recall prior exploration of the Maze. Spontaneous alternation is run in the Y-maze or the radial arm maze.
• Coloboma Mouse
  The coloboma mouse is a hyperactive mutant line that responds to drugs currently used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder such as d-Amphetamine and Atomoxetine. Amphetamine normalizes the hyperactivity in the coloboma mice and induces hyperactivity in normal wild type mice.
  
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