title: Cued and spatial learning in the water maze: equivalent learning in male and female mice.
abstract: Mammals navigate a complex environment using a variety of strategies, which can operate in parallel and even compete with one another. We have recently described a variant water maze task in which two of these strategies, hippocampus-dependent spatial learning and striatum-dependent cued learning, can be dissociated. Male rodents perform better at some spatial learning tasks, while female rodents more readily learn certain striatum-dependent behavioral strategies. We therefore predicted that sex would differentially influence spatial and cued learning in the water maze. We trained adult male and female C57Bl/6 mice for 7 days in the two-cue variant of the water maze, with probe trials on days 5 and 7. In two independent experiments, males and females performed similarly, with both groups showing good spatial learning after 5 and 7 days of training, and both groups showing trend-level cued learning after 5 days and robust learning after 7. Therefore, contrary to our hypothesis, sex does not significantly affect cued or spatial learning in this task.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, USA.
authors.forename: Lissandra C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Baldan Ramsey
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pittenger
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*