title: Touchscreen tasks in mice to demonstrate differences between hippocampal and striatal functions.
abstract: In mammals, hippocampal and striatal regions are engaged in separable cognitive processes usually assessed through species-specific paradigms. To reconcile cognitive testing among species, translational advantages of the touchscreen-based automated method have been recently promoted. However, it remains undetermined whether similar neural substrates would be involved in such behavioral tasks both in humans and rodents. To address this question, the effects of hippocampal or dorso-striatal fiber-sparing lesions were first assessed in mice through a battery of tasks (experiment A) comprising the acquisition of two touchscreen paradigms, the Paired Associates Learning (dPAL) and Visuo-Motor Conditional Learning (VMCL) tasks, and a more classical T-maze alternation task. Additionally, we sought to determine whether post-acquisition hippocampal lesions would alter memory retrieval in the dPAL task (experiment B). Pre-training lesions of dorsal striatum caused major impairments in all paradigms. In contrast, pre-training hippocampal lesions disrupted the performance of animals trained in the T-maze assay, but spared the acquisition in touchscreen tasks. Nonetheless, post-training hippocampal lesions severely impacted the recall of the previously learned dPAL task. Altogether, our data show that, after having demonstrated their potential in genetically modified mice, touchscreens also reveal perfectly adapted to taxing functional implications of brain structures in mice by means of lesion approaches. Unlike its human counterpart requiring an intact hippocampus, the acquisition of the dPAL task requires the integrity of the dorsal striatum in mice. The hippocampus only later intervenes, when acquired information needs to be retrieved. Touchscreen assays may therefore be suited to study striatal- or hippocampal-dependent forms of learnings in mice.
authors: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Adaptatives, UMR 7364, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Faculté de Psychologie, Neuropôle Strasbourg, GDR CNRS 2905, 12 rue Goethe, F-67000 Strasbourg, France; Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co KG, Dept. of CNS Diseases Research, Birkendorfer Strasse 65, D-88397 Biberach an der Riss, Germany.
authors: David F
authors: DF
authors: Delotterie
authors: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Adaptatives, UMR 7364, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Faculté de Psychologie, Neuropôle Strasbourg, GDR CNRS 2905, 12 rue Goethe, F-67000 Strasbourg, France. Electronic address: chantal.mathis@unistra.fr.
authors: Chantal
authors: C
authors: Mathis
authors: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Adaptatives, UMR 7364, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Faculté de Psychologie, Neuropôle Strasbourg, GDR CNRS 2905, 12 rue Goethe, F-67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors: Jean-Christophe
authors: JC
authors: Cassel
authors: Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co KG, Dept. of CNS Diseases Research, Birkendorfer Strasse 65, D-88397 Biberach an der Riss, Germany.
authors: Holger
authors: H
authors: Rosenbrock
authors: Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co KG, Dept. of CNS Diseases Research, Birkendorfer Strasse 65, D-88397 Biberach an der Riss, Germany.
authors: Cornelia
authors: C
authors: Dorner-Ciossek
authors: Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co KG, Dept. of CNS Diseases Research, Birkendorfer Strasse 65, D-88397 Biberach an der Riss, Germany.
authors: Anelise
authors: A
authors: Marti
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000502:physiology*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Associative memory; Dorsal striatum; Excitotoxic lesions; Hippocampus; Mice; Touchscreen tasks