RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Object Space Task for mice and rats
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 198382
DO 10.1101/198382
A1 Lisa Genzel
A1 Evelien Schut
A1 Tim Schröder
A1 Ronny Eichler
A1 Gülberk Bayraktar
A1 Nikkie Cornelisse
A1 Hussein Gareth
A1 Federico Giuliani
A1 Angela Gomez
A1 Sidney Hulzebos
A1 Joanne Igoli
A1 Stefanos Loizou
A1 Irene Navarro Lobato
A1 Luc Nijssen
A1 Luca Reinik
A1 Olaf Stoutjedijk
A1 Minou Verheag
A1 Francesco Battaglia
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/04/198382.abstract
AB An important aspect of a memory is whether it is representing a specific event or whether it is a representation of knowledge extracted over multiple episodes. To investigate this difference, we developed a new multi-trial behavioral task that can assess memory accumulation in rodents. It makes use of rodents’ innate drive to explore novelty and allows for later recordings (e.g. electrophysiology) and interventions. The task consists of three distinct conditions (stable, overlapping, random) that can be repeated within animals. Rodents are exposed to multiple sample trials, in which they explore objects in specific spatial arrangements. In the stable condition, the locations are constant during all sample trials, and one object’s location changes during test. In the random condition, object locations are presented without a specific spatial pattern. In the overlapping condition, one location is shared (overlapping) between all trials while the other location changes during sample trials. We show that in the overlapping condition, instead of only remembering the last sample trial, rodents form a cumulative memory of the sample trials.We adapted the task so that it can be learned by both rats and mice, making it suitable for investigating this aspect of memory across species and using a wide array of methods to measure and perturb the neural basis of memory.