A comparison of behavioral paradigms assessing spatial memory in tree shrews

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Animal Behavior
• Alzheimer's Disease Research

Background:

• Spatial navigation deficits are early indicators of Alzheimer's disease in humans.
• Evaluating animal models for Alzheimer's disease requires robust spatial memory tests.
• Chinese tree shrews are suitable models for Alzheimer's disease but lack established spatial cognition assessments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate novel behavioral paradigms for assessing spatial memory in Chinese tree shrews.
• To evaluate the efficacy of these new tasks in detecting hippocampal lesion-induced cognitive impairments.
• To facilitate the use of tree shrews in Alzheimer's disease research.

Main Methods:

• Established reward-based radial-arm maze and cheeseboard maze tasks for Chinese tree shrews.
• Assessed spatial memory in 12 adult male tree shrews using these tasks and a water maze.
• Administered bilateral hippocampal lesions and re-tested spatial memory performance.

Main Results:

• Tree shrews demonstrated gradual improvement and plateaued performance in all three mazes during training.
• Post-lesion, spatial learning was significantly impaired in the radial-arm and cheeseboard mazes.
• Memory retrieval was impaired in the water maze task following hippocampal lesions.

Conclusions:

• The novel cheeseboard maze task effectively identifies spatial memory impairments in tree shrews.
• These tasks show potential for monitoring cognitive decline in tree shrew models of Alzheimer's disease.
• This study supports the use of tree shrews for advancing Alzheimer's disease research.