Age-dependent and -independent behavioral deficits in Tg2576 mice.
The Tg2576 mouse model of excessive cerebral beta-amyloid deposition is now more than a decade old, yet consensus as to its exact characteristics and utility as a model of Alzheimer's disease is still lacking. Four different cohorts of control and Tg2576 mice, aged approximately 3, 9, 13 and 21 months, were therefore subjected to a battery of tests, principally to assess cognitive and species-typical behaviors. A novel test, the paddling Y-maze, demonstrated an age-dependent deficit in 10 and 14, but not 3 month Tg2576 mice, also in aged (21 month) control mice. However, in many other cognitive tests few Tg2576-related deficits could be shown. This frequently seemed attributable to poor performance of control mice. Tests of species-typical behaviors showed that Tg2576 mice had a deficit in burrowing behavior at all ages. An age-independent deficit was also seen in nest construction, but only when mice were group-housed; most individually housed mice in either group made reasonable nests. Overall, the results suggested that these Tg2576 mice are not a simple, suitable or reliable model for routine screening of treatments for Alzheimer's disease. However, this model might perform better behaviorally on a different genetic background.
Deacon
R M J
RM
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK. robert.deacon@psy.ox.ac.uk
Cholerton
L L
LL
Talbot
K
K
Nair-Roberts
R G
RG
Sanderson
D J
DJ
Romberg
C
C
Koros
E
E
Bornemann
K D
KD
Rawlins
J N P
JN
D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D003071:Cognition; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005260:Female; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000503:physiopathology*; D018782:Maze Learning; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D009425:Nesting Behavior; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013045:Species Specificity; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric