Lesburguères Edith, Tsokas Panayiotis, Sacktor Todd Charlton, Fenton André Antonio
Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, USA.
Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, the Robert F. Furchgott Center for Neural and Behavioral Science, Downstate Medical Center, State University of New York, New York, USA.
Bio Protoc. 2017 Apr 20;7(8). doi: 10.21769/BioProtoc.2231.
This protocol was originally designed to examine long-term spatial memory in PKMζ knockout (., PKMζ-null) mice (Tsokas ., 2016). Our main goal was to test whether the ability of these animals to maintain previously acquired spatial information was sensitive to the type and complexity of the spatial information that needs to be remembered. Accordingly, we modified and combined into a single protocol, three novelty-preference tests, specifically the object-in-context, object-in-place and object-in-location tests, adapted from previous studies in rodents (Mumby ., 2002; Langston and Wood, 2010; Barker and Warburton, 2011). During the training (learning) phase of the procedure, mice are repeatedly exposed to three different environments in which they learn the spatial arrangement of an environment-specific set of non-identical objects. After this learning phase is completed, each mouse receives three different memory tests configured as environment mismatches, in which the previously learned objects-in-space configurations have been modified from the original training situation. The mismatch tests differ in their cognitive demands due to the type of spatial association that is manipulated, specifically evaluating memory for object-context and object-place associations. During each memory test, the time differential spent exploring the novel (misplaced) and familiar objects is computed as an index of novelty discrimination. This index is the behavioral measure of memory recall of the previously acquired spatial associations.
该实验方案最初旨在研究PKMζ基因敲除（即PKMζ缺失）小鼠的长期空间记忆（Tsokas等，2016）。我们的主要目标是测试这些动物维持先前获取的空间信息的能力，是否对需要记忆的空间信息的类型和复杂性敏感。因此，我们对三项新颖性偏好测试进行了修改并整合为一个实验方案，这三项测试分别是情境中的物体、位置上的物体和位置中的物体测试，改编自先前对啮齿动物的研究（Mumby等，2002；Langston和Wood，2010；Barker和Warburton，2011）。在实验过程的训练（学习）阶段，小鼠反复接触三种不同的环境，在这些环境中它们学习特定环境下一组不同物体的空间排列。在这个学习阶段完成后，每只小鼠接受三项不同的记忆测试，这些测试被设置为环境不匹配，即先前学习的空间中物体的配置与原始训练情况不同。由于所操纵的空间关联类型不同，不匹配测试在认知要求上存在差异，具体评估对物体-情境和物体-位置关联的记忆。在每次记忆测试中，计算探索新颖（放置错误）物体和熟悉物体所花费的时间差，作为新颖性辨别指数。该指数是先前获得的空间关联记忆回忆的行为指标。
