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Interval timing is disrupted in female 5xFAD mice: An indication of altered memory processes
Author(s) -
Gür Ezgi,
Fertan Emre,
Alkins Kindree,
Wong Aimée A.,
Brown Richard E.,
Balcı Fuat
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of neuroscience research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.72
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1097-4547
pISSN - 0360-4012
DOI - 10.1002/jnr.24418
Subject(s) - reinforcement , time perception , neuroscience , memory consolidation , interval (graph theory) , psychology , phenotype , biology , developmental psychology , cognition , hippocampus , mathematics , genetics , social psychology , combinatorics , gene
Temporal information processing in the seconds‐to‐minutes range is disrupted in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, we investigated the timing behavior of the 5xFAD mouse model of AD in the peak interval (PI) procedure. Nine‐month‐old female mice were trained with sucrose solution reinforcement for their first response after a fixed‐interval (FI) and tested in the inter‐mixed non‐reinforced PI trials that lasted longer than FI. Timing performance indices were estimated from steady‐state timed anticipatory nose‐poking responses in the PI trials. We found that the time of maximal reward expectancy (peak time) of the 5xFAD mice was significantly earlier than that of the wild‐type (WT) controls with no differences in other indices of timing performance. These behavioral differences corroborate the findings of previous studies on the disruption of temporal associative memory abilities of 5xFAD mice and can be accounted for by the scalar timing theory based on altered long‐term memory consolidation of temporal information in the 5xFAD mice. This is the first study to directly show an interval timing phenotype in a genetic mouse model of AD.