Journal
BEHAVIOURAL BRAIN RESEARCH
Volume 289, Issue -, Pages 125-132Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2015.04.035
Keywords
Navigation; 3D; Mice; Memory
Categories
Funding
- BBSRC [BB/J009792/1]
- MRC grant [G1100669]
- Wellcome grant [083540]
- BBSRC CASE studentship [BB/F015968/1]
- Axona Ltd
- MRC [G1100669] Funding Source: UKRI
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [1073268, BB/J009792/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- Medical Research Council [G1100669] Funding Source: researchfish
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We tested whether mice can represent locations distributed throughout three-dimensional space, by developing a novel three-dimensional radial arm maze. The three-dimensional radial maze, or radiolarian maze, consists of a central spherical core from which arms project in all directions. Mice learn to retrieve food from the ends of the arms without omitting any arms or re-visiting depleted ones. We show here that mice can learn both a standard working memory task, in which all arms are initially baited, and also a reference memory version in which only a subset are ever baited. Comparison with a two-dimensional analogue of the radiolarian maze, the hexagon maze, revealed equally good working-memory performance in both mazes if all the arms were initially baited, but reduced working and reference memory in the partially baited radiolarian maze. This suggests intact three-dimensional spatial representation in mice over short timescales but impairment of the formation and/or use of long-term spatial memory of the maze. We discuss potential mechanisms for how mice solve the three-dimensional task, and reasons for the impairment relative to its two-dimensional counterpart, concluding with some speculations about how mammals may represent three-dimensional space. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
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