Environmental enrichment, neocortical ectopias, and behavior in the autoimmune NZB mouse

New Zealand Black (NZB) mice have severe autoimmune disease and approximately 40% have cortical ectopias in layer I of sensorimotor cortex. Because the ectopias are similar to those found in dyslexics, NZB mice have been used as an animal model for developmental learning disorders. In addition, these mice have been used as a model of learning deficits associated with autoimmune disease. To determine whether early intervention would affect learning processes in NZB mice, they were reared after weaning in standard cages or enriched environments. They were given a battery of behavioral tests to measure learning, laterality, and activity, after which they were sacrificed and their brains examined for cortical ectopias. The tests sorted into two behavioral sets. Ectopia-associated behaviors included black-white discrimination learning and the Morris spatial maze. As a group, the mice performed well on these tasks. Ectopic mice had poorer performance than non-ectopics on these measures, and environmental enrichment countered the effects of the ectopias. Autoimmune-associated behavior involved two-way avoidance learning in a shuttlebox. Mice were uniformely poor on this task, ectopias did not affect behavior, and environmental enrichment was without benefit. Evidence from this and other studies shows that poor shuttlebox performance is related to the presence of autoimmune disease. Thus, autoimmune disease and cortical ectopias each appear to affect a separate set of behavioral processes. Environmental enrichment is most effective for behavioral impairments mediated via cortical ectopias, but is much less effective, if at all, if autoimmunity is the primary mediator of the impairments.