title: A comparison of wild-caught wood mice and bank voles in the Intellicage: assessing exploration, daily activity patterns and place learning paradigms.
abstract: Our previous work has revealed very high baseline neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of wood mice as compared particularly to bank voles; a difference which may be related to learning capacity. This study explored whether the newly-developed Intellicage system could be used to compare these species in simple spatial learning paradigms. The Intellicage is essentially a group-housing cage that also allows continuous automatic recording of each individual's behaviour. Seven wild-caught bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus) were compared with seven wild-caught long-tailed wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) in the Intellicage system over 9 days. During the first 90 min after entering the cage, the wood mice were substantially more exploratory than the bank voles (P = 0.003). Over subsequent days, both species showed nocturnal activity increases with voles being 3.7 times more active overall. In the spatial learning paradigms, there were significant species-by-time interactions with wood mice outperforming bank voles on both place learning (P = 0.027) and subsequent reversal (P = 0.006). Conclusions are firstly that the wood mice show superior learning abilities in this paradigm, and secondly that the Intellicage serves as a valuable cognitive testing arena for small wild rodents, or for circumstances where cognition must be compared independent of different responses to handling or novel environments.
authors.affiliation: Division of Neuroanatomy and Behavior, Institute of Anatomy, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Galsworthy
authors.forename: Irmgard
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Amrein
authors.forename: Pavel A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Kuptsov
authors.forename: Inga I
authors.initials: II
authors.lastname: Poletaeva
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zinn
authors.forename: Anton
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rau
authors.forename: Alexei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vyssotski
authors.forename: Hans-Peter
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Lipp
mesh_terms: D000204:Activity Cycles / Q000502:physiology; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D003411:Arvicolinae / Q000502:physiology*; D035841:Behavioral Research / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D002940:Circadian Rhythm / Q000502:physiology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D006799:Housing, Animal; D008297:Male; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000295:instrumentation; D009115:Muridae / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012193:Reversal Learning / Q000502:physiology; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D013045:Species Specificity; D013686:Telemetry / Q000295:instrumentation