Shukitt-Hale Barbara, McEwen John J, Szprengiel Aleksandra, Joseph James A
USDA-ARS, Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, 711 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
Neurobiol Aging. 2004 Feb;25(2):223-9. doi: 10.1016/s0197-4580(03)00041-1.
Aged rats show decrements in performance on cognitive tasks that require the use of spatial learning and memory. We used the 8-arm radial water maze (RAWM) to measure spatial learning as a function of age in young (6 months) and old (21 months) male F344 rats. Rats were placed in the RAWM in different start arms with the same goal arm for 3 days (five trials/day); the goal arm was changed on day 4. Old rats demonstrated spatial impairment as evidenced by increased latencies to find the hidden platform on day 4. Old rats made significantly more errors, both reference and working memory errors, than young rats on all days. It is likely that the old rats utilized non-spatial strategies to solve the task, and therefore were impaired in learning a new platform location. The RAWM is a reliable, sensitive, and powerful additional test to assess age-related spatial learning and memory deficits, combining the advantages of the Morris water maze and the radial arm maze while minimizing the disadvantages.
老年大鼠在需要运用空间学习和记忆的认知任务上表现出能力下降。我们使用八臂放射状水迷宫（RAWM）来测量年轻（6个月）和老年（21个月）雄性F344大鼠的空间学习能力随年龄的变化。将大鼠放置在RAWM中不同的起始臂，目标臂相同，持续3天（每天五次试验）；第4天更换目标臂。老年大鼠表现出空间障碍，表现为第4天找到隐藏平台的潜伏期增加。在所有天数中，老年大鼠比年轻大鼠出现的错误明显更多，包括参考记忆错误和工作记忆错误。老年大鼠很可能利用非空间策略来解决任务，因此在学习新的平台位置时受到损害。RAWM是一种可靠、灵敏且强大的额外测试，用于评估与年龄相关的空间学习和记忆缺陷，它结合了莫里斯水迷宫和放射状臂迷宫的优点，同时将缺点最小化。
