| First Author | Flood JF | Year | 1992 |
| Journal | J Gerontol | Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 2 | Pages | B52-9 |
| PubMed ID | 1538061 | Mgi Jnum | J:2735 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:51257 | Doi | 10.1093/geronj/47.2.b52 |
| Citation | Flood JF, et al. (1992) Early onset of age-related impairment of aversive and appetitive learning in the SAM-P/8 mouse. J Gerontol 47(2):B52-9 |
| abstractText | SAM-P/8 (P/8if) mice, trained on aversive and appetitive training tasks, showed age-related impairment of learning on more difficult tasks. Using aversive training tasks, acquisition of step-down passive avoidance did not differ between 4- and 12-month-old mice. T-maze footshock avoidance acquisition detected impairment from 9 to 12 months of age. On the appetitive tasks, 12-month-old mice required significantly more trails than 4-month-old mice to learn to press a lever for milk reinforcement or to learn a specific sequence of 10 black-white, left-right discriminations. However, learning a simple black-white discrimination in the same 10-unit maze did not discriminate between the performance of 4- and 12-month-old mice. A lack of age-related changes in food, water, and milk consumption suggests that changes in motivation do not account for the decline in learning in older P/8if mice. The results suggest an early onset of impaired learning relative to the 17.2-month median life span of the P/8if mice. |
