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ERIC Number: EJ1431828
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2056-7936
A Rodent Obstacle Course Procedure Controls Delivery of Enrichment and Enhances Complex Cognitive Functions
Sandra Gattas; Heather A. Collett; Andrew E. Huff; Samantha D. Creighton; Siobhon E. Weber; Shoshana S. Buckhalter; Silas A. Manning; Hardeep S. Ryait; Bruce L. McNaughton; Boyer D. Winters
npj Science of Learning, v7 Article 21 2022
Enrichment in rodents affects brain structure, improves behavioral performance, and is neuroprotective. Similarly, in humans, according to the cognitive reserve concept, enriched experience is functionally protective against neuropathology. Despite this parallel, the ability to translate rodent studies to human clinical situations is limited. This limitation is likely due to the simple cognitive processes probed in rodent studies and the inability to control, with existing methods, the degree of rodent engagement with enrichment material. We overcome these two difficulties with behavioral tasks that probe, in a fine-grained manner, aspects of higher-order cognition associated with deterioration with aging and dementia, and a new enrichment protocol, the 'Obstacle Course' (OC), which enables controlled enrichment delivery, respectively. Together, these two advancements will enable better specification (and comparisons) of the nature of impairments in animal models of complex mental disorders and the potential for remediation from various types of intervention (e.g., enrichment, drugs). We found that two months of OC enrichment produced substantial and sustained enhancements in categorization memory, perceptual object invariance, and cross-modal sensory integration in mice. We also tested mice on behavioral tasks previously shown to benefit from traditional enrichment: spontaneous object recognition, object location memory, and pairwise visual discrimination. OC enrichment improved performance relative to standard housing on all six tasks and was in most cases superior to conventional home-cage enrichment and exercise track groups.
Nature Portfolio. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://www.nature.com/npjscilearn/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (DOD); National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) (DHHS/NIH); National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) (DHHS/NIH)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: HR00111820021; T32NS45540; T32GM008620