Daily glucose injections facilitate performance of a win-stay water-escape working memory task in mice

In an experiment that compared 3 versions of a working memory task, male C57BL/6 mice given either 3 (n = 7) or 5 (n = 7) opportunities (test runs) per trial to choose the escape choice section of a maze acquired a win-stay (spatial matching-to-sample) water-escape task. Mice given only 1 test run per trial (n = 6) were unable to perform above chance level. In a 2nd experiment, 14 mice from the 1st experiment were tested for performance on the 3-test-run version of the task. Each mouse was tested for 12 consecutive days with each of 4 doses of glucose (0, 50, 100, & 250 mg/kg ip) given 30 min before testing. The two higher doses increased the percentage of correct test run choices on all 3 daily test runs across the 12 days of testing. Daily glucose injections facilitated the use of trial-dependent information.