Original ArticlesRepeated Acquisition of a Spatial Navigation Task in Mice: Effects of Spacing of Trials and of Unilateral Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion
Section snippets
Animals
Fifty-five C57BL mice (C57BL/6JOlaHsd, Harlan UK Limited, Bicester, UK) weighing 20 ± 2 g were used. They were randomly assigned to six experimental groups (see Table 1 ). The animals were housed in groups of 10-in standard type III MakrolonTM cages. Prior to the experiment, the animals were allowed to adapt to our animal facilities for at least 1 week. They were kept under constant temperature (21°C) and humidity (50%) with an artificial 12-h light–dark cycle (on: 1900 hours), and had free
Histology
Small areas of infarcted tissue were obvious on the surface of the brains, the areas being smaller the longer after surgery they were examined. The damage induced by MCA-O, however, could not be quantified reliably, because infarct volumes decrease nonlinearly over the course of time [our unpublished data and [5]]. According to Chiamulera and coworkers [5], the decrease in infarct volume after MCA-O might be due to “phagocytic activity, which leads to a gradual elimination of necrotic material
Discussion
The standard water escape task in which an animal is required to find a submerged platform predominantly measures spatial reference memory [23]. The reference memory (RM) holds trial-independent information [3]concerning, for example, the position of the escape platform. Repeated acquisition procedures are designed to assess an additional memory component, namely, working memory 38, 43, 44.
Several authors have shown that rats are capable of mastering repeated acquisition tasks [e.g. 24, 38] in
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Cited by (20)
Two spaced training trials induce associative ERK-dependent long term memory in Neohelice granulata
2021, Behavioural Brain ResearchCitation Excerpt :This ubiquitous behavioral occurrence known as spacing effect was first described by Ebbinghaus [2], and has since been observed in different species [3–8]. LTM formation has been shown to be induced by specific time intervals between trials in very different learning and memory animal paradigms including vertebrates [9–11], as well as invertebrates [12–17]. However, while the spacing effect has been thoroughly characterized from a behavioral standpoint, not as much is known about the molecular and synaptic mechanisms that underlie this phenomenon.
Stroke, Cognitive Function, and Alzheimer's Disease
2016, Genes, Environment and Alzheimer's DiseaseAssessment of behavioral flexibility after middle cerebral artery occlusion in mice
2014, Behavioural Brain ResearchPattern and predictability in memory formation: From molecular mechanisms to clinical relevance
2013, Neurobiology of Learning and MemoryCitation Excerpt :In contrast, LTM requires not only protein synthesis, but also gene expression to stabilize the new growth and enhanced cellular and synaptic plasticity required for LTM expression (Bailey, 1999; Bailey, Bartsch, & Kandel, 1996; Castellucci et al., 1989; Mozzachiodi, Lorenzetti, Baxter, & Byrne, 2008; Sangha et al., 2003; Sutton et al., 2001; Tully, Preat, Boynton, & Del Vecchio, 1994; Wustenberg, Gerber, & Menzel, 1998). The spacing effect does not appear to regulate the acquisition or development of STM, but strongly regulates the induction of LTM in a variety of learning tasks in a wide range of species, including pigeon (Gibbon et al., 1977), rodent (Bolding & Rudy, 2006; Klapdor & Van Der Staay, 1998; Williams et al., 1991), honeybee (Gerber et al., 1998), Drosophila (Tully et al., 1994), Hermissenda (Rogers, Talk, & Matzel, 1994), Lymnaea (Lukowiak, Cotter, Westly, Ringseis, & Spencer, 1998), and Aplysia (Carew et al., 1972). The effect of training pattern on the formation of ITM is less well studied, but has shown to be of benefit in some cases (Sutton et al., 2002).
Massed versus spaced visuospatial memory in cognitively healthy young and older adults
2013, Alzheimer's and DementiaCitation Excerpt :The past 100+ years have attempted to characterize this “spacing effect” in both human and nonhuman models. The literature regarding nonhuman subjects consisted of studies necessarily using only nonverbal measures, primarily rodent spatial navigation tasks [5–7], whereas the literature regarding human subjects has largely consisted of studies relying on verbal tasks (e.g., list learning, story learning; refer Ref. [4] for review), with a relatively small body of literature exploring nonverbal tasks (e.g., mirror tracing). Although less extensive than the research using this paradigm with verbal tasks, the studies focused on massed versus spaced performance on nonverbal tasks generally support the role of spaced training to enhance learning.
Juvenile pigs use simple geometric 2D shapes but not portrait photographs of conspecifics as visual discriminative stimuli
2012, Applied Animal Behaviour ScienceCitation Excerpt :In the present experiment, all pigs were trained with massed trials, i.e. multiple trials were run in close succession. It has been shown that spaced trials are more effective than massed trials to acquire learning tasks (e.g. Klapdor and van der Staay, 1998; Sisti et al., 2007). Moreover, spacing of trials may reduce spontaneous alternation, because the chance increases with increasing inter-trial interval that an animal might forget which side it chose in the previous trial.