What kind of learning? If fear learning, Sprague-Dawleys are better than Wistars. If spatial learning, other rat starins might be better than those two.

I believe it is Long Evan rats.

Yes, if not fear learning, Long-Evans might be the smartest rat strain. I also have some good experience with Brown Norways.

For conditioned taste aversio, male Wistar rats are a default strain.

Cd1

Of course talking of mice. Cd 1s are outbred and thus more representative

I did my studies with Sprague-dawley rats and I got excellent results.

As you can tell from the comments already posted, the question (actually questions) you pose is complex and the answer is textured. The rat strain appropriate for a particular task assessing one aspect of the memory construct may not be the best for some other aspect. Also, how is the deficit being induced. This might guide strain choice as well. The best approach is a comprehensive review of the literature on the potential tasks of interest and see where that leads you. Good luck!

The question need complete review check. Information from personal experiences are good. But the questioner should be more rely on the published comparative paper.

After many years of research I feel that Evans Black Hooded rats tend to be hardier, more aggressive and more intelligent. The ones I used seemed to have slightly larger heads so surgery and histology were also easier. The black and white colored rats were also more esthetically pleasing which made a psychological difference after years working in a basement lab: Any small advantage pays off over time....

I agree with Bartlomiej. The importance of your work usually emerges from comparing it to the work of others. Unless you have explicit reasons for choosing otherwise, the best strain for your assay will be the one that has been most used for that particular assay.

Long-Evans rats are superior, because white rats do not see as well.

I work with Spragues. Train them for Pavlovian conditioning or FR1 paradigms and very happy with my results. Know that people work with them on reversal learning and it works well.

We use Long-Evans rats for maternal behavior experiments.

Wistar rats should do fine. Morris water Maze is best testing system for cognitive behavior?

Hope it works!

M

We made with male wistars, open field test,morris water maze,white-black box,some kinds of labyrinths and it was ok.

I used wistar rats (Rattus norvegicus) for Morris water maze task and obtained good results. ( 200-230 gr).

i will use wistar male rat and Radial Arm Water Maze paradigm .a lot of papers have been published and good results obtained

Thank you so much for all your suggestions and ideas for enhancing my research knowledge..

Most of studies are using Wistars or Spragues. I worked with both and have published over 15 articles on behavior. I have used almost all common behavioral tests and got great and satisfactory results with them. Important to keep in mind that handling is very critical so rats get used to be removed from their cages by hands. Don't you ever take a completely naive non handled rat for behavioral testing.

I agree with nashat Abumaria, Handling of rats in days before test is very important factor.

If you go for cognition, use wild rats only. I agree that wistars and others are convenient to use, but you will lose the most important evolutionary selected part of rat cognition working on selected strains. I would suggest you to read some papers by Jaap M. Koolhaas and Michael Taborsky.

The type of strain depends on your research question. There are a lot of cognitive tests available and there are a lot of phenotypic differences between rat strains

I recommend you to read chapter 12 of the book Animal Personalities from Carere & Maestripieri. This chapter written by Cavigelli, Michael & Ragan, provides a nice overview of the most used mouse and rat strains and their behavioral and physiological characteristics.

http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Personalities-Behavior-Physiology-Evolution/dp/0226921972

All rats can be used for cognitive tests. However, the different strains will vary on how well they adapt to testing situations. You definitely want to figure out how good you need their vision to be, how agile they need to be to perform the test, and whether you intend to look at manipulations that may enhance or diminish cognition. Some rats, like Long-Evans rats have good visual acuity, are quite spry, and extremely smart. But if you seek cognitive enhancements it may be challenging to devise your test to find improvements from your control levels. Sprague Dawleys are a terrific middle of the road model, though a little clumsy with so-so vision. They are also much easier to handle and adapt well to most test situations. I've had good success using them to assess object, place, context, and spatial memory as well as attention.

I have worked with both Wistar and Long-Evans and find the Long-Evans to be smarter, but slightly more aggressive. Our lab uses classical conditioning in rat pups to assess the neurobiology of infant learning and using Long-Evans has worked well for us (even in very young animals). As was mentioned above, Long-Evans seem to have good visual acuity so if you are using a task that is marked with visual cues perhaps you should consider using them.

Thank you all for great suggestion and help..

I will suggest sprague Dawley (SD) rats. Actually, I worked on both rats Wistar and SD for cognition but I found best in SD rat.

If you use Wistar rats, you will get results on cognition of the Wistar line. These are selective lines and cognition of those might be affected.

For all of the reasons previously stated (eye-sight etc) our institute prefers Long-Evans unless there is some other reason in the research question eg. EAE model works in Lewis rats but we have had little sucess with Long-Evans.

May I also suggest The behavior of the laboratory rat :A handbook with tests by Whishaw and Kolb