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has been cited by the following article:

• TITLE: Dissociation between Performances in Water Maze and Spontaneous Alternation in BALB/C versus A/J Mice

  AUTHORS: Julien Celestine, Arnaud Tanti, Arnaud Aubert

  KEYWORDS: Morris Water Maze; Spontaneous Alternation; Behavior; BALB/c; A/J; Learning

  JOURNAL NAME: Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, Vol.2 No.2, May 30, 2012

  ABSTRACT: Learning processes are extensively studied in behavioral neuroscience. As experimental models, Morris Water Maze (MWM) and Spontaneous Alternation (SA) represent two of the most frequently used laboratory tests to respectively address spatial vs non-spatial tasks. Several factors have been shown to impact on those learning, including strain, gender, apparatus, conditioning, vision, lighting conditions and stress level. In order to focus on the later, we compared the acquisition of two learning tasks (MWM and SA) in BALB/c and A/J mice, which are known as fearful and stress-sensitive strains. Here, we report that BALB/c mice exhibited higher performances than A/J mice in the MWM (i.e. spatial reference memory task), whereas A/J mice performed better in the SA (i.e. spatial working memory task). These results indicate dissociated processes in the acquisition of spatial vs non-spatial tasks, and emphasize a varying influence of emotional reactivity on different forms of cognition.