Spatiotemporal processing deficits in female CGG KI mice modeling the fragile X premutation

The fragile X premutation is a tandem CGG trinucleotide repeat expansion in the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene between 55 and 200 repeats in length. A CGG knock-in (CGG KI) mouse has been developed that models the neuropathology and cognitive deficits reported in fragile X premutation carriers. It has been suggested that carriers of the premutation demonstrate a spatiotemporal hypergranularity, or reduced resolution of spatial and temporal processing. A temporal ordering of spatial locations task was used to evaluate the ability of CGG KI mice to process temporal and spatial information with either high or low levels of spatial interference. The results indicate that CGG KI mice showed difficulty performing a spatial novelty detection task when there were high levels of spatial interference, but were able to perform the novelty detection task when there was low spatial interference. These data suggest that CGG KI mice show reduced spatial and temporal resolution that are modulated by the dosage of the Fmr1 gene mutation, such that when behavioral tasks require mice to overcome high levels of either spatial or temporal interference, the CGG KI mice perform increasingly poorly as the CGG repeat length increases.