Of Mice and Mazes: Similarities Between Mice and Rats on Dry Land But Not Water Mazes

doi:10.1016/S0031-9384(96)00176-X

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 60, Issue 5, November 1996, Pages 1191-1197

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0031-9384(96)00176-X Get rights and content

Abstract

Mice are impaired relative to rats in place and matching-to-place learning when tests are given in a swimming pool. The rat advantage may stem from a superior spatial ability or from adaptation to a niche that has prepared them for competency in the water. In the present study, mice (C57BL/6) were compared with rats (Long-Evans) in a number of dry-land spatial tasks given on a radial arm maze and in a place task given in a swimming pool. The performance of the mice matched that of the rats in all dry-land tasks, but was inferior to that of the rats in the swimming pool. The results provide further evidence for a species difference in swimming-pool performance but do not support the idea that there are necessary differences in spatial abilities between mice and rats. It is suggested that, if optimal place learning is required for neurobehavioral studies of mice, such performance is more likely to be obtained in dry-land tasks than in swimming-pool tasks. Nevertheless, the species differences warrent further study because they could provide important insights into species differences is spatial learning more generally.

Section snippets

Subjects

Eight 60-day-old Long-Evans hooded rats (4 females and 4 males) and eight 60-day-old C57BL/6 mice (4 female and 4 male) were used. The animals lived in groups of 4 in hanging wire mesh cages (rats) or plastic tubs filled with cobbed bedding (mice) in an animal room with the temperature set at 21°C and with a light/dark cycle set at $1410$ h. There were no sex differences in any of the tests.

Food Deprivation

For dry-land maze testing, the animals were placed on a restricted feeding schedule that maintained them at

Dry-Land Maze Acquisition

For initial radial-arm maze learning, the animals were placed individually in the center of the maze once each day for 11 days. The same 4 arms were baited with sunflower seeds each day (Fig. 1 top, left). Animals were removed from the apparatus after they had found all of the sunflower seeds or after 10 min, whichever came first.

Animals in both groups displayed improved performance across days in that the number of initial errors, reentries, and total errors decreased, Fs (10,140) > 9.18, ps <

DISCUSSION

The main finding of this study is that, in dry-land maze tests, there is no difference in the performance of rats and mice, whereas in a swimming-pool spatial task the performance of the mice is inferior to that of the rats. These results suggest that the spatial abilites of mice are not inferior to those of rats. Nevertheless, the results confirm that mice do more poorly in swimming-pool tasks, which suggests that it is likely that nonspatial factors contribute to the poor performance of mice

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and from the National Center of Excellence for Recovery of Function.

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Of Mice and Mazes: Similarities Between Mice and Rats on Dry Land But Not Water Mazes

Abstract

Section snippets

Subjects

Food Deprivation

Dry-Land Maze Acquisition

DISCUSSION

Acknowledgements

Brain Res.

Behav. Brain Res.

Cognition

Behav. Brain Res.

Brain Res.

Behav. Brain Res.

Brain Res.

Behav. Brain Res.

Cortex

Behav. Neural Biol.

Behav. Brain Res.

Brain Res.

Behav. Brain Res.

Behav. Neur. Biol.

Learn. Motiv.

Brain Res.

Physiol. Behav.

Neuroscience

Neurosci. Lett.

Brain Res.

Physiol. Behav.

Behav. Brain Res.

Brain Res. Bull.

Physiol. Behav.

Spatial memory, maze running strategies and cholinergic mechanisms in inbred strains of mice

Behav. Brain Res.

Learning in inbred mice: strain-specific abilities across 3 radial maze problems

Behav. Gen.

Genetically associated variation in the distribution of dentat e granule cell synapses upon the pyramidal cell dendrites in mouse hippocampus

J. Comp. Neurol.

The natural history of the house mouse

Field Studies