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Passive Avoidance and Complex Maze Learning in the Senescence Accelerated Mouse (SAM)

Age and Strain Comparisons of SAM P8 and R1

^a Behavior Neuroscience Section, Laboratory of Neurosciences
^b Gerontology Research Center, National Institute on Aging, Baltimore, Maryland
^c Department of Psychology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

Donald K. Ingram, Molecular Physiology and Genetics Section, Nathan W. Shock Laboratories, GRC, National Institute on Aging, 5600 Nathan Shock Drive, Baltimore, MD 21224 E-mail: ingramd{at}grc.nia.nih.gov.

Decision Editor: John A. Faulkner, PhD

Two strains of the senescence accelerated mouse, P8 and R1,were tested in footshock-motivated passive avoidance (PA; P8, 3–21 months; R1, 3–24 months) and 14-unit T-maze (P8 and R1, 9, and 15 months) tasks. For PA, entry to a dark chamber from a lighted chamber was followed by a brief shock. Latency to enter the dark chamber 24 hours later served as a measure of retention. Two days of active avoidance training in a straight runway preceded 2 days (8 trials/day) of testing in the 14-unit T-maze. For PA retention, older P8 mice entered the dark chamber more quickly than older R1 mice, whereas no differences were observed between young P8 or R1 mice. In the 14-unit T-maze, age-related learning performance deficits were reflected in higher error scores for older mice. P8 mice were actually superior learners; that is, they had lower error scores compared with those of age-matched R1 counterparts. Although PA learning results were in agreement with other reports, results obtained in the 14-unit T-maze were not consistent with previous reports of learning impairments in the P8 senescence accelerated mouse.

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