Roman F S, Marchetti E, Bouquerel A, Soumireu-Mourat B
Laboratoire de Neurobiologie des Comportements, UMR 6562 CNRS Université de Provence, IBHOP, Traverse Charles Susini, 13388 Cedex 13, Marseille, France.
J Neurosci Methods. 2002 Jun 30;117(2):173-81. doi: 10.1016/s0165-0270(02)00094-8.
In order to have an ethologically relevant behavioral task, we developed the olfactory tubing maze to study learning and memory processes in mice. Mice have to make two olfactory-reward associations across three training sessions. The maze is made up of four identical testing chambers connected to each other by semicircular cylinders. After having chosen one of two odors presented on each side of a testing chamber, the mice have to run to the next testing chamber. From one testing chamber to the next, the side for presentating each odor is randomly assigned. The mouse must run through the entire circular maze to make a response at the four testing chambers. A complete session consists of 20 trials made by running five times clockwise through the maze with 4 trials per run. The training and data recording are fully automated by a custom-made software program. Three different experiments were performed. The results indicated that mice can easily make the olfactory discriminative associations in this new apparatus. Analysis of the data suggests that it would be possible using this olfactory tubing maze to study sub-categories of memory similar in some respects to those observed in humans. Consequently, possible effects on learning and memory of classical treatments (i.e. pharmacological or lesions) or genetic modifications in transgenic or gene-targeting mice could be tested.
为了获得一个与行为学相关的行为任务，我们开发了嗅觉管道迷宫来研究小鼠的学习和记忆过程。小鼠必须在三个训练阶段中建立两种嗅觉奖励关联。迷宫由四个相同的测试室组成，这些测试室通过半圆形圆柱体相互连接。在选择了测试室两侧呈现的两种气味之一后，小鼠必须跑到下一个测试室。从一个测试室到下一个测试室，每种气味呈现的一侧是随机分配的。小鼠必须跑完整个圆形迷宫才能在四个测试室做出反应。一个完整的实验阶段包括20次试验，即顺时针绕迷宫跑五次，每次跑4次试验。训练和数据记录由一个定制的软件程序完全自动化。进行了三个不同的实验。结果表明，小鼠能够在这个新装置中轻松地建立嗅觉辨别关联。数据分析表明，使用这个嗅觉管道迷宫有可能研究在某些方面与人类观察到的记忆类似的记忆子类别。因此，可以测试经典治疗（即药理学或损伤）或转基因或基因靶向小鼠的基因修饰对学习和记忆的可能影响。
