Daily Glucose Injections Facilitate Performance of a Win-Stay Water-Escape Working Memory Task in Mice

• Published in: Behavioral neuroscience 1992-04, Vol.106 (2), p.345-350
• Main Authors: Means, Larry W, Fernandez, Timothy J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal; Animal behavior; Animals; Association Learning - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Blood Glucose - metabolism; Brain - physiology; Choice Behavior - physiology; Discrimination Learning; Discrimination Learning - physiology; Escape Conditioning; Escape Reaction - physiology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; Glucose; Glucose Solution, Hypertonic - administration & dosage; Male; Mental Recall - physiology; Mice; Mice, Inbred C57BL; Motivation; Orientation - physiology; Rodents; Short Term Memory; Social Environment; Sugar; Vertebrates: respiratory system
• ISSN: 0735-7044; 1939-0084
• DOI: 10.1037/0735-7044.106.2.345

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.