AD patients tend to wander and get lost/disoriented. I'm not sure if the standard Morris Water Maze is necessarily the best task to test AD mouse models on, in relation to this question. I'm interested in testing a possible role for head-direction cells in this process, but need to think of a good task. Any ideas/references?
Spatial learning and memory can also be evaluated using the T-maze. I've used it on TDP43 mice and it seemed to work very well!
8 Arm Radial Maze should be good too
differently from the MWM, it is based on positive motivation similar to Above Elisabeth's T-maze.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21385942
best,
Novel object recognition and spatial object recognition are simple models that can be useful!
is "passive avoidance" also a good task for AD mice?
in my study i use morris water maze and passive avoidance evaluating memory loss
I recommend to use a spatial-learning labyrinth paradigm. The task consists of a repeated walk through a labyrinth made of clear, transparent acrylic glass tubes. The mice have to find a familiar dark box in a laboratory environment presenting distal cues. You find a detailled description of the labyrinth in the supplemental material to our publication: Moosmang et al., 2005 J. Neurosci 25:9883-9892.
The Barnes maze and the MWM are good translationnal behavioral paradigm to assess navigation performances in mice (both Learning during the training phase and Memory with the probe trial). Object location tasks are less time-consuming, but they assess different spatial abilities than navigation (which are also impaired in AD).
The advantage of MWM is that highly similar tasks are used in human both in virtual reality and in real world (i.e. : Kalova et al. 2005 behavioral brain research 159(2): 175-86).
However, MWM may be more stressful for mice which are more physiologically adapted to dry land tasks (Whishaw, et al. 1996. Physiol. Behav. 60, 1191e1197) like the Barnes Maze task. The Barnes Maze task has been used in numerous studies on AD-mice. For example, APOE4 mice shown specific navigation deficits in this task (Bott et al. 2013. Neurobiol of aging 2013: 2683-2693) similar to what is described in APOE4 carriers during MCI (Laczo et al. Neurodeg Diseases DOI:10.1159/000321581).
Concerning the potential contribution of head directions cells, they may probably be implicated in both tasks, but one can speculate that in the Barnes maze, they may potentially play an important role in early orientation decisions because of the starting position at arena's center and the targets holes equally distributed on its periphery.
Morris water maze works great for mice. The radial arm maze, t maze, and Barnes maze are also good choices. But mice sometimes don't run these dry land tasks well, so you might want to try the water-motivated radial arm maze developed by Victor Denenberg and Heather Bimonte (now Heather Bimonte-Nelson).
I think morris water maze and radial arm maze, both can be used to test spatial learning..
Another possibility might be a sand maze. The protocol is the same as the MWM but using a kiddie pool full of sand instead of a tub of water. The motivation changes from seeking escape of an aversive situation to seeking a buried food reward so it may not be appropriate in all situations and it can't beat the establishment of the MWM, but I think it's worthy of consideration.
The sand maze is easier to maintain than the water maze and you are 100% less likely to accidentally flood the test room (and the offices below it) if you leave the hose on to fill the tub, forget about it, and leave the lab for the night. *ahem*
Here's a paper that uses a sand maze:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074742711000463
Radial arm morris water maze might also be an option. Also there are several mwm paradigms to test different types of aquisition and retention, so you may want to match those to your research question and model for the best out come.
I use plus-maze task to study spatial learning strategies. AD model mice has been tested on that task before. You may try using it. There are also a lot of modifications you can do like adding additional t shaped boxes at the end of each arm.
I think from my own experience that morris water maze modified with Chen protocol (Chen, G. et al. Nature 408:975-979 ) works very nicely to test spatial learning and memory in mice (NMRI, C57BL/6, BALB/c)
I used a linear maze with 11 possibilities of error. Picture is provided in my papers
In my opinion any kind of maze (MWM, PLUS MAZE TEST, LINEAR MAZE OR RADIAL ARM MAZE can be used for this purpose.
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