Morris water maze

Jett DA, Kuhlmann AC, Farmer SJ, et al. 1997. Age-dependent effects of developmental lead exposure on performance in the Morris water maze. Pharmacol Biochem Behav 57(l-2) 271-279. 

Passive avoidance task Morris water maze radial maze operant behavior tasks... 

Kanit L, Taskiran D, Furedy JJ, Kulali B, McDonald R, Pogun S. (1998). Nicotine interacts with sex in affecting rat choice between "look-out" and "navigational" cognitive styles in the Morris water maze place learning task. Brain Res Bull. 46(5) 441-45. 

Socci DJ, Sanberg PR, Arendash GW. (1995). Nicotine enhances Morris water maze performance of young and aged rats. Neurobiol Aging. 16(5) 857-60. 

In the fimbria/fornix or cingulate bundle, selectively reduced the concentration of serotonin in the rat hippocampus but had no effect on spatial memory in the Morris water maze or radial arm maze. However, the lesion... 

Quartermain et al. 1993, 1994 Rowan et al. 1990 Winter and Petti 1987). Also, low doses of gepirone and atropine, which individually fail to modify rat performance in a spatial task, when administered together impair performance [Barrett and Rowan 1990]. Similarly, the selection of a single dose of MDL 73,005EF that did not impair the acquisition or recall of a task in the Morris water maze enhanced the deficits caused by gepirone or atropine [Barrett and Rowan 1992]. 

In a passive avoidance procedure in the rat, low doses of ondansetron reversed the scopolamine-induced memory deficit, whereas tropisetron was ineffective. However, in the Morris water-maze test, tropisetron but not ondansetron counteracted the learning and memory impairment caused by scopolamine [Pitsikas and Borsini 1997]. 

Fontaine R, Ontiveros A, Ehe R, et al A double-blind comparison of nefazadone, imipramine and placebo in major depression. J Clin Psychiatry 55 234-241, 1994 Fontana DJ, Daniels SE, Flenderson C, et al Ondansetron improves cognitive performance in the Morris water maze spatial navigation task. Psychopharmacology 120 409-417, 1995... 

However, a different mouse model of CaMKIV inhibition, the forebrain-specific transgenic dn-CaMKIV mouse, yielded somewhat different results. Spatial memory was tested using the hidden platform and the visible platform versions of the Morris water maze task. Both tests showed impaired spatial memory formation in dn-CaMKIV mice compared to controls, since dn-CaMKIV mice did not remember the location of the platform as well as wild type mice (Kang et al., 2001). Tests... 

Mice with abnormally poor or abnormally good cognitive abilities may produce aberrant behavior in this test (e.g., increased or decreased social interaction, respectively). To rule out this possibility, consider testing mice in some additional memory paradigms. Memory tests, such as the Morris Water Maze and OFT habituation, may be performed to assess cognitive functions in any abnormally behaving mouse. 

Janus, C. (2004) Search strategies used by APP transgenic mice during spatial navigation in the Morris water maze. Learn Mem 11, 337-346. 

Logue, S. F., Paylor, R. and Wehner, J. M. (1997) Hippocampal lesions cause learning deficits in inbred mice in the Morris water maze and conditioned-fear task. Behav Neurosci 111, 104-113. 

Woolley ML, Bentley JC, Sleight AJ, Marsden CA, Fone KC. A role for 5-ht6 receptors in retention of spatial learning in the Morris water maze. Neuropharma-cology 2001 41 210-219. 

Pitsikas N, Brambilla A, Borsini F. DAU 6215, a novel 5-HT3 receptor antagonist, improves performance in the aged rat in the Morris water maze task. Neurobiol Aging 1993 14 561-564. 

Morris Water Maze (Spatial Learning and Reference Memory)... 

Several other behavioral abnormalities have also been described in 5-HT2C-R KOs. These mice display several types of repetitive behavior that have been likened to compulsions (110). 5-HT2C-R KO mice also display altered stress responses (111), a deficit in maternal behavior (Storm, unpublished data), decreased spatial memory performance in the Morris water maze, and decreased long-term potentiation (LTP) in medial perforant path-dentate gyrus synapses (112). 

Malleret G, Hen R, Guillou JL, Segu L, Buhot MC. 5-HT1B receptor knock-out mice exhibit increased exploratory activity and enhanced spatial memory performance in the Morris water maze. J Neurosci 1999 19(14) 6157-6168. 

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