Behavioral Testing Flashcards

Question

Name the test and describe what it is used to measure.

Answer 1

Barnes Spatial Maze Gaining popularity over other testing modalities No water required and no food/water restriction 1 of 18 holes leads to an escape box Measure is latency to escape

Answer 2

Measures ability to learn and remember an association between aversive experiences and environmental cues Data are collected are "freezing episodes" Day 1: Condition Training - mouse placed in a chamber and cue (tone) + shock is applied; freezing episodes are measured; measures _unconditioned fear_ Day 2, Part 1: Contextually Conditioned Fear - mouse is placed in a similar chamber as Day 1 & # of spontaneous freezing episodes are measured (in absense of tone or shock) Day 2, Part 2: Contextual Discrimination of Fear Conditioning and Cued Conditioning - mouse placed in distinctly different chamber and freezing bouts are measured with and without cue

Answer 3

Radial Maze Measures spatial learning and memory

Answer 4

Animals are food restricted Animals are receive food reward for visiting an arm the first time, but receive negative reinforcement if an arm is revisited. Measure time it takes to collect all food

Answer 5

T Maze Measures spatial learning and memory Animals are food or water restricted, then reinforced with food or water reward at alternating ends of the maze Animals must remember which end was previously reinforced to get reward Can also be used for avoidance tests

Answer 6

Operant Chamber aka "Skinner Box" An operant conditioning chamber permits experimenters to study behavior conditioning (training) by teaching a subject animal to perform certain actions (like pressing a lever) in response to specific stimuli, like a light or sound signal. When the subject correctly performs the behavior, the chamber mechanism delivers food or another reward.

Answer 7

Conditioned Place Preference (CPP) is a form of Pavlovian conditioning used to measure the motivational effects of objects or experiences. This paradigm can also be used to measure conditioned place aversion with an identical procedure involving aversive stimuli instead.

Answer 8

Shuttle Box A shuttle box is a piece of apparatus used in animal learning experiments. The box is divided into two halves and the animal must move from one compartment to the other in order to gain their reward or to avoid an adversive stimulus.

Answer 9

Avoidance is an aversive (emotional) conditioning paradigm in which the subject learns to associate a particular context with the occurrence of an aversive event (e.g., an electrical shock, the unconditioned stimulus). _Active avoidance_: a term applied to a class of tasks in which animals are required to actively exhibit certain experimenter-defined responses in order to avoid punishment; an example of its use is measuring the time it takes an animal to leave a location where it previously received a shock _Passive avoidance_: Passive avoidance behavior of rodents is defined as the suppression of the innate preference for the dark compartment of the test apparatus (or stepping down from an elevated platform) following exposure to an inescapable shock. Thereby, the passive avoidance task combines Pavlovian contextual fear conditioning with the expression of an instrumental response, the avoidance of entering a particular (punished) area of the training context.

Answer 10

Light/Dark Box Measure of anxiety Mice naturally prefer dark, protected environments Measure is the the willingness to explore illuminate, unprotected area Data collected is the number of transitions between compartments and time spent in each

Answer 11

Elevated Plus Maze Measure of anxiety Mice tend to want to spend more time in the enclosed arms Measure is time spent in open vs. closed portions of the maze.

Answer 12

Elevated Zero Maze Used to measure anxiety The design eliminates the "ambiguous area" in the elevated plus maze, which is the open space between the arms

Answer 13

Porsolt Forced Swim Test It is a model of depression & for testing antidepressants Animals are subjected to two trials during which they are forced to swim in an acrylic glass cylinder filled with water, and from which they cannot escape. The first trial lasts 15 minutes. Then, after 24-hours, a second trial is performed that lasts 5 minutes. The time that the test animal spends without moving in the second trial is measured. This immobility time is decreased by antidepressants.

Answer 14

Tail Suspension Test Used in models of depression Mice suspended by the tail eventually give up and become immobile & time is measured until immobility May be favored over Pasolt Forced Swim Test because it avoids water and is may be less stressful to the animals

Answer 15

Prepulse Inhibition (PPI) is a neurological phenomenon in which a weaker prestimulus (prepulse) inhibits the reaction of an organism to a subsequent strong startling stimulus (pulse). The stimuli are usually acoustic, but tactile stimuli (e.g. via air puffs onto the skin) and light stimuli are also used. It is used in mouse models of schizophrenia. Deficits of prepulse inhibition manifest in the inability to filter out the unnecessary information. Such deficits are noted in patients suffering from illnesses like schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, and in people under the influence of drugs, surgical manipulations, or mutations.