Beijing Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Tai Ping Road 27, Beijing 100850, China.
Behav Brain Res. 2012 Jan 1;226(1):26-31. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2011.08.043. Epub 2011 Sep 3.
In this study, we investigated the performance of BALB/c mice in Morris water maze task under two different illumination (bright and dim light) conditions. The results show that BALB/c mice could not complete the Morris water maze task under bright light (BLC), but performed very well under dim light (DLC). Animals that swam under BLC had a higher serum corticosterone level than those under DLC. Animals pretrained under DLC had a lower serum corticosterone level than those directly exposed to BLC. Our results also show that animals under BLC had a higher level of thigmotaxis (a behavioral anxiety measure during testing) than under DLC. Correlation analysis shows that corticosterone and thigmotaxis levels have a positive correlation with escape latency, indicating that corticosterone and thigmotaxis levels have a negative correlation with learning/memory performance. These results suggest that BALB/c mice have the ability to learn a spatial task; under BLC, they performed poorly owing to a high level of thigmotaxis.
在这项研究中，我们研究了 BALB/c 小鼠在两种不同光照（明亮和昏暗）条件下在 Morris 水迷宫任务中的表现。结果表明，BALB/c 小鼠在强光（BLC）下无法完成 Morris 水迷宫任务，但在弱光（DLC）下表现非常出色。在 BLC 下游泳的动物的血清皮质酮水平高于在 DLC 下游泳的动物。在 DLC 下预先训练的动物的血清皮质酮水平低于直接暴露于 BLC 的动物。我们的结果还表明，在 BLC 下的动物的触壁行为（测试期间的一种行为焦虑测量）水平高于在 DLC 下的动物。相关性分析表明，皮质酮和触壁行为水平与逃避潜伏期呈正相关，表明皮质酮和触壁行为水平与学习/记忆性能呈负相关。这些结果表明，BALB/c 小鼠具有学习空间任务的能力；在 BLC 下，由于触壁行为水平较高，它们表现不佳。
