Hunsaker Michael R
Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
Behav Neurosci. 2012 Jun;126(3):371-80. doi: 10.1037/a0028453.
In order to overcome difficulties in evaluating cognitive function in mouse models of genetic disorders, it is critical to take into account the background strain of the mouse and reported phenotypes in the clinical population being studied. Recent studies have evaluated cognitive function across a number of background strains and found that spatial memory assayed by the water maze and contextual fear conditioning often does not provide optimal results. The logical extension to these results is to emphasize not only spatial, but all attributes or domains of memory function in behavioral phenotyping experiments. A careful evaluation of spatial, temporal, sensory/perceptual, affective, response, executive, proto-linguistic, and social behaviors designed to specifically evaluate the cognitive function each mouse model can be performed in a rapid, relatively high throughput manner. Such results would not only provide a more comprehensive snapshot of brain function in mouse disease models than the more common approach that approaches nonspecific spatial memory tasks to evaluate cognition, but also would better model the disorders being studied.
为了克服在遗传性疾病小鼠模型中评估认知功能的困难，考虑小鼠的背景品系以及所研究临床群体中报告的表型至关重要。最近的研究评估了多个背景品系的认知功能，发现通过水迷宫和情境恐惧条件反射测定的空间记忆通常无法提供最佳结果。这些结果的合理延伸是，在行为表型实验中不仅要强调空间记忆，还要强调记忆功能的所有属性或领域。可以以快速、相对高通量的方式对空间、时间、感觉/知觉、情感、反应、执行、原语言和社交行为进行仔细评估，以专门评估每个小鼠模型的认知功能。这样的结果不仅能比采用非特异性空间记忆任务来评估认知的更常见方法提供小鼠疾病模型中脑功能更全面的概况，还能更好地模拟所研究的疾病。
