title: Bright lighting conditions during testing increase thigmotaxis and impair water maze performance in BALB/c mice.
abstract: In this study, we investigated the performance of BALB/c mice in Morris water maze task under two different illumination (bright and dim light) conditions. The results show that BALB/c mice could not complete the Morris water maze task under bright light (BLC), but performed very well under dim light (DLC). Animals that swam under BLC had a higher serum corticosterone level than those under DLC. Animals pretrained under DLC had a lower serum corticosterone level than those directly exposed to BLC. Our results also show that animals under BLC had a higher level of thigmotaxis (a behavioral anxiety measure during testing) than under DLC. Correlation analysis shows that corticosterone and thigmotaxis levels have a positive correlation with escape latency, indicating that corticosterone and thigmotaxis levels have a negative correlation with learning/memory performance. These results suggest that BALB/c mice have the ability to learn a spatial task; under BLC, they performed poorly owing to a high level of thigmotaxis.
authors: Beijing Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Tai Ping Road 27, Beijing 100850, China.
authors: Yan
authors: Y
authors: Huang
authors: Wenxia
authors: W
authors: Zhou
authors: Yongxiang
authors: Y
authors: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001007:Anxiety / Q000097:blood; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D003345:Corticosterone / Q000097:blood; D008029:Lighting; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D051379:Mice; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D013550:Swimming / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D003345:Corticosterone