Behavioral impairment of APP(V717F) mice in fear conditioning: is it only cognition?

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a devastating human neurodegenerative disorder associated with progressive deterioration of cognitive abilities. The APP(V717F) mouse, an animal model of AD showing robust overexpression of the human amyloid precursor protein (APP) carrying the mutation 717 V --> F, was also shown to exhibit learning and memory performance deficits. However, AD patients suffer from other abnormalities including altered emotionality. Emotionality has not been analyzed in AD mouse models. Here, motor and posture patterns exhibited by APP(V717F) mice are described in a detailed manner in fear conditioning, a paradigm that allows one to test both mnemonic and emotional characteristics of mice. Our results revealed a complex set of behavioral alterations in APP(V717F) mice in measures of exploratory behavior and fear suggesting that the effects of APP(V717F) overexpression in this mouse model are not limited to cognition and may need to be thoroughly examined in the future in a broad range of behavioral tests.