nervous system
• at P56, homozygotes show an abnormal mammillary region in the caudal hypothalamus
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• notably, supramammillary nuclei and the hippocampal region remain intact
• at P56, adult homozygotes lack medial mammillary nuclei (MMn) and a large portion of the lateral mammillary neurons
• in adults, the area in the posterior hypothalamus previously occupied by MMn is reduced and filled with cell-sparse neuropils
• the mammillary axonal tree is severely reduced, comprising a thin principal mammillary tract and a barely detectable mammillotegmental tract, along with a small group of rostrally directed axons ending around the ventral thalamus
• a relatively large and still visible fornix bundle is present, probably due to the survival of a part of the lateral mammillary nuclei
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behavior/neurological
N |
• adult homozygotes exhibit no deficits in hippocampal-dependent tasks such as contextual and cued fear conditioning tests and social transmission of food preference
• in addition, homozygotes are not impaired in the spatial reference memory test in the eight-arm radial arm maze
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• homozygotes display deficits in a specific subset of spatial tasks which require combined use of both spatial and working memory functions
• adult homozygotes are impaired in acquisition of the spatial memory version of the Barnes circular maze (where the escape hole is not marked), with only 18% of homozygotes exhibiting a spatial strategy versus 78% and 82% of wild-type and heterozygous mice, respectively, at the end of training
• however, homozygotes are as proficient as wild-type and heterozygous animals in the acquisition and performance of the cued version of the Barnes maze, in which an escape hole is direclty marked
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• adult homozygotes show deficits in spatial working memory tasks, including the spontaneous alternation and the working memory test in the radial arm maze
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