Abstract
This research aimed to evaluate the effect of nicotine treatment and prior training on a spatial learning task in differently aged NMRI male mice. In a longitudinal study, mice were randomly assigned to one of 14 experimental groups receiving different combinations of chronically injected nicotine (0.35 mg/kg) administered for 10 days (5 days before and during 5 days acquisition of task) or control treatments and training in the water maze at different ages. The mice displayed shorter escape latencies when evaluated at 6 and 10 months than when tested in this task at 2 months for the first time, demonstrating that early training preserves performance in the water maze up to 8 months after the initial experience. Nicotine treatment did not significantly change performance in the water maze at any age tested. Early practice in a spatial reference memory task appears to have lasting consequences and can potentially contribute to preventing some age-related spatial learning deficits.
Highlights
Spatial cognition is essential for the integration of environmental information but progressively declines with advancing age in humans, monkeys and rodents (Erickson & Barnes, 2003)
The present research aimed to evaluate whether the performance of a spatial learning task at different ages is influenced by a behavioral intervention and a pharmacological manipulation
Effects of nicotine administration on watermaze performance at different ages: The findings presented here show that nicotine at the dose tested did not change the water maze performance of NMRI mice at any of the ages tested, reflecting that the age at which nicotine was administered did not influence spatial reference memory
Summary
Spatial cognition is essential for the integration of environmental information but progressively declines with advancing age in humans, monkeys and rodents (Erickson & Barnes, 2003). The Morris water maze task is a useful paradigm to investigate age-related spatial impairments since it is based on processes that may resemble human spatial functioning (Barnes, 1998; D’Hooge & De Deyn, 2001), individual differences among aged rats have been described in this paradigm (Gallagher et al, 2003). This animal model has been used to show a deficit of performance at 9 and 10 months of age in strains NMRI and C57 mice respectively (Magnuson, 1997). It is reported that prior experience in spatial tasks can influence performance when animals are re-tested on the (C) 2003 Freund & Pettman, U.K
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