Wading pools, fading memories—place navigation in transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's disease

Heikki Tanila

doi:10.3389/fnagi.2012.00011

Abstract

The Morris swim navigation task (“water maze”) has been a primary research tool to assess hippocampal-dependent spatial learning and memory in rodents for three decades. Originally developed for rats, its application to mouse studies has been a tedious process, but nowadays there are more studies performed with the Morris swim task in mice than in rats. The task has proved to be particularly useful in demonstrating age-related memory impairment in transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's disease (AD). This review focuses on task details that are most relevant for its application to mouse studies in general and characteristic patterns of impaired performance in Alzheimer model mice as compared with rodents sustaining hippocampal lesions.

Highlights

30 years ago Richard Morris and colleagues published in an article in Nature on a novel behavioral task for place navigation in rats and demonstrated the sensitivity of the task for hippocampal lesions (Morris et al, 1982)
The task has proved to be useful in demonstrating age-related memory impairment in transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
This review focuses on task details that are most relevant for its application to mouse studies in general and characteristic patterns of impaired performance in Alzheimer model mice as compared with rodents sustaining hippocampal lesions

Summary

Introduction

30 years ago Richard Morris and colleagues published in an article in Nature on a novel behavioral task for place navigation in rats and demonstrated the sensitivity of the task for hippocampal lesions (Morris et al, 1982). This is a general problem in using mice in cognitive tasks, but especially pronounced in the Morris swim task, because there are strain differences in spatial memory per se, and in visual acuity and the learning pattern (Kennard and Woodruff-Pak, 2011).

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Conclusion