Lewon Matthew, Peters Christina M, Van Ry Pam M, Burkin Dean J, Hunter Kenneth W, Hayes Linda J
Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, MS 296, Reno, NV 89557 USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, MS 296, Reno, NV 89557 USA.
Behav Processes. 2017 Sep;142:8-20. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2017.05.012. Epub 2017 May 19.
The mdx mouse is an important nonhuman model for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) research. Characterizing the behavioral traits of the strain relative to congenic wild-type (WT) mice may enhance our understanding of the cognitive deficits observed in some humans with DMD and contribute to treatment development and evaluation. In this paper we report the results of a number of experiments comparing the behavior of mdx to WT mice in operant conditioning procedures designed to assess learning and memory. We found that mdx outperformed WT in all learning and memory tasks involving food reinforcement, and this appeared to be related to the differential effects of the food deprivation motivating operation on mdx mice. Conversely, WT outperformed mdx in an escape/avoidance learning task. These results suggest motivational differences between the strains and demonstrate the potential utility of operant conditioning procedures in the assessment of the behavioral characteristics of the mdx mouse.
mdx小鼠是杜氏肌营养不良症（DMD）研究的重要非人类模型。相对于同基因野生型（WT）小鼠，对该品系的行为特征进行表征，可能会增进我们对一些患有DMD的人类所观察到的认知缺陷的理解，并有助于治疗方法的开发和评估。在本文中，我们报告了一系列实验的结果，这些实验在旨在评估学习和记忆的操作性条件反射程序中比较了mdx小鼠和WT小鼠的行为。我们发现，在所有涉及食物强化的学习和记忆任务中，mdx小鼠的表现优于WT小鼠，这似乎与食物剥夺激发操作对mdx小鼠的不同影响有关。相反，在逃避/回避学习任务中，WT小鼠的表现优于mdx小鼠。这些结果表明了品系之间的动机差异，并证明了操作性条件反射程序在评估mdx小鼠行为特征方面的潜在效用。
