Abstract

Cognitive impairments can be a significant problem after a traumatic brain injury (TBI), which affects millions worldwide each year. There is a need for establish reproducible cognitive assays in rodents to better understand disease mechanisms and to develop therapeutic interventions towards treating TBI-induced impairments. Our goal was to validate and standardize the radial arm water maze (RAWM) test as an assay to screen for cognitive impairments caused by TBI. RAWM is a visuo-spatial learning test, originally designed for use with rats, and later adapted for mice. The present study investigates whether test procedures, such us the presence of extra-maze cues influences learning and memory performance. C57BL/6 mice were tested in an 8-arm RAWM using a four-day protocol. We demonstrated that two days of training, exposing the mice to extra-maze cues and a visible platform, influenced learning and memory performance. Mice that did not receive training performed poorer compared to mice trained. To further validate our RAWM protocol, we used scopolamine. We, also, demonstrated that a single mild closed head injury (CHI) caused deficits in this task at two weeks post-CHI. Our data supported the use of 7 trials per day and a spaced training protocol as key factor to unmask memory impairment following CHI. Here, we provide a detailed standard operating procedure for RAWM test, which can be applied to a variety of mouse models including neurodegenerative diseases and pathology, as well as when pharmacological approaches are used.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-18-2020

Notes/Citation Information

Published in PLOS ONE, v. 15, no. 8, e0232862.

© 2020 Macheda et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232862

Funding Information

Research reported in this publication was supported by National Institutes of Health under award numbers R00 AG044445 (ADB), R01 NS103785 (ADB), R21 AG059123 (ADB). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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All the data is included in the body of the paper. The DOI: is for the protocol.io. www.protocols.io (dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.bb84iryw).

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