Measuring Behavior 2005: Banchaabouchi et al.

Strain differences in the hole board and fear conditioning tasks

M. Al Banchaabouchi, K. Gale and N. Rosenthal

EMBL-Mouse Biology Unit, Phenotyping Core Facility, Monterotondo, Italy

We are part of the Eumorphia Project. This is a programme dedicated to developing and standardizing procedures for comprehensive phenotyping studies in the mouse to understand and identify the genetic basis of human diseases. Our facility is particularly interested in mouse behavioral phenotyping.

After the successful establishment of the first line screening, we are currently involved in developing more specialized secondary tests designed to more fully characterize complex behavior phenotypes. We will be validating behavioral tasks such as the hole board and the fear conditioning protocols. The hole board maze is used to assess spatial learning and memory whereas fear conditioning is used to measure both emotional and spatial learning as well as memory. Four male inbred mouse strains (C57BL/6J, BALB/c, C3H and 129S2/SvPas), at twelve weeks of age, will be studied and results will be further analysed and compared.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands.