I'm planning to do fear conditioning and a Morris water maze on mice in my experiment, but both tests seem to be stressful for animals.
Would these two tests interfere with each other?
If it's ok to do both, what is the appropriate sequence and interval between them?
Thanks.
Yes both tests are very stressful for mouse but firstly train your mice - as all these procedures usually require some training exercise so that mouse knows what he needs to do to recover/survive/escape. It helps if you know your mice too...you might check out the International Mouse Phenotyping Resource of Standardised Screens for specific details of methods
https://www.mousephenotype.org/impress/
If you plan to do these experiments on the same cohort of mice I think I would do the water maze first because it triggers survival instinct and they will associate you with rescue & will trust you more. Fear conditioning is best done in mice that live in small groups together so that they can reassure each other that all is OK now they have returned to their home cage. Solitary housed mice don't have the luxury of reassurance from another mouse so it will be more stressful for them ! Good luck
Yes both tests are very stressful for mouse but firstly train your mice - as all these procedures usually require some training exercise so that mouse knows what he needs to do to recover/survive/escape. It helps if you know your mice too...you might check out the International Mouse Phenotyping Resource of Standardised Screens for specific details of methods
https://www.mousephenotype.org/impress/
If you plan to do these experiments on the same cohort of mice I think I would do the water maze first because it triggers survival instinct and they will associate you with rescue & will trust you more. Fear conditioning is best done in mice that live in small groups together so that they can reassure each other that all is OK now they have returned to their home cage. Solitary housed mice don't have the luxury of reassurance from another mouse so it will be more stressful for them ! Good luck
I guess opinions can vary a lot in this field. And both tests are tough for mice, also MWM, remember they are not rats and hate swimming as much as they fear the shock...
Whatever you decide to do, MWM first or counter-balancing, I would recommend to space the two tests in time 3 to 4 weeks in order to wash out as much as possible stress or mistrust or whatever mice feel from one test before they start the other...
I did similar kind of tests on the same mice. Instead of a MWM I did a Barnes maze or circular holeboard. The dry version of the watermaze works well. I performed the Barnes maze before the fear conditioning, since this last test is much more stressful for the animals.
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