behavior/neurological
N |
• adult male mice show no significant differences in general motor activity and anxiety-like behaviors relative to wild-type controls
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• in a novel object recognition task, males show normal baseline exploratory behavior when presented with two identical objects but spend a significantly longer time than wild-type controls exploring a novel object at 4 and 24 hours after training, suggesting enhanced recognition memory
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• in a Morris water maze task, males exhibit an enhanced initial learning rate and shortened escape latencies during reversal learning when the platform is removed from target to the opposite quadrant; importantly, males spend a significantly longer time than wild-type controls in the new target quadrant after reversal training
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• at 10-12-weeks of age, males show enhanced learning memory in the Morris water maze, novel object recognition, and passive avoidance tasks relative to age- and weight-matched wild-type controls
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• in a passive avoidance task, males show a significantly higher latency to step into the dark compartment on day 3 (24 hours after foot-shock training) relative to wild-type controls
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nervous system
• mice exhibit significantly higher expression levels of synaptophysin (a pre-synaptic component marker) and post-synaptic density 95 (PSD95, a post-synaptic component marker) in hippocampal CA1 and CA3 regions, suggesting alterations in synapse morphology and function
• however, brain morphology is normal
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• whole brain lysates show upregulated mRNA and protein expression levels of Bdnf and enhanced Bdnf/TrkB signaling
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