Exploratory activity and fear conditioning abnormalities develop early in R6/2 Huntington's disease transgenic mice

The Huntington's disease R6/2 transgenic mouse model, containing exon 1 of the human huntingtin gene with a greatly increased CAG repeat length, shows multiple effects of the altered polyglutamine in the resultant protein. The authors report that exploratory and fear conditioning behavioral changes appear well before the onset of obvious pathology. The first differences in exploratory and fear conditioning behavior emerge by 4 and 5 weeks of age, respectively. These behaviors correlate with the earliest neurochemical and molecular changes previously reported and provide insight into functional mechanisms by which cellular and subcellular disease changes may mediate neurological symptoms. These studies provide behavioral protocols suitable for high-throughput screening of therapeutic agents.