Exploration and habituation in nervous mutant mice.

Nervous mutant mice have selective damage to deep cerebellar nuclei and Purkinje cells. Compared to normal littermate controls, nervous mutant mice did not show habituation of a hole poke response to a large hole. The nervous mutants showed both signs of increased contact with a novel stimulus (number of rearing responses) and decreased exploration (number of hole pokes in small holes). Results are discussed in terms of a similarity between the behavioral effects of cerebellar damage and hippocampal damage.