Information theoretic assays of exploration in aged mice

描述（由申请人提供）：正常衰老伴随着认知和情感功能的改变。虽然这些变化在其他健康的老年人中意义不大，但它们可能对痴呆症或认知障碍患者产生破坏性影响。不幸的是，目前对老年人行为障碍的基础神经科学知识仍然知之甚少。老年小鼠是解决这一重大缺陷的适当模型。衰老小鼠大脑的神经生理学与人类相似，小鼠中观察到的许多行为与人类相似。例如，在小鼠和人类中，对新环境的总体探索都存在与年龄相关的下降。探索性行为是由不同的神经递质系统以特定的方式调制的;因此，探索性行为的复杂分析可以为CNS功能的年龄相关变化提供重要的见解。目前，缺乏研究探索性行为的强大工具，我们建议开发这些工具。我们将开发一个多行为状态（MBS）表示的竞技场对小鼠的位置，小鼠运动活动（停止/暂停，转动，和进步），和其他小鼠行为学参数（饲养，伸展，梳理等）的影响。然后，我们将扩展这种方法来研究如何收购的地方记忆改变MBS模型中的变量。将计算这些数据的熵率和预测信息，并用于量化响应的随机性和复杂性。将在年轻（6周）、中年（12个月）和老年（>24个月）C57 B16小鼠组中收集验证数据。我们的初步结果表明，老年小鼠与年轻队列相比，具有不太复杂的新环境探索模式。本研究开发的分析工具在评估未来基于药理学或遗传学的治疗对增强痴呆患者认知和情感功能的疗效时将是非常宝贵的。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Normal aging is accompanied by alterations in both cognitive and emotional function. While these changes are of modest significance in otherwise healthy elders, they can have devastating impacts in persons with dementia or cognitive impairment. Unfortunately, current knowledge of the basic neuroscience underlying behavioral disturbances in the elderly remains very poorly understood. Aged mice are appropriate models to address this significant deficit. Neurophysiology of the aging mouse brain resembles that seen in man, and many behaviors observable in mice have close human parallels. For example, in both mouse and man there is an age-related decline in gross exploration of a new environment. Exploratory behavior is modulated in a specific manner by different neurotransmitter systems; thus, sophisticated analyses of exploratory behavior can provide important insights into age-related changes in CNS function. Currently, powerful tools to study exploratory behavior are lacking; we propose to develop these tools. We will develop a multiple behavioral state (MBS) representation of arena influences on mouse location, mouse locomotor activity (stop/pausing, turning, and progression), and other mouse ethological parameters (rearing, stretching, grooming, etc.). We will then extend this approach to study how acquisition of place memories alters variables within the MBS model. The entropy rate and predictive information will be calculated for these data and used to quantify the amount of randomness and complexity of the responses. Validation data will be collected in young (6 wk), mid-life (12 month) and aged (>24 month) C57BI6 mouse cohorts. Our preliminary results show that aged mice have less complex novel environment exploratory patterns compared to a younger cohort. The analytic tools developed in this study will be invaluable when evaluating the efficacy of future pharmacological or genetic-based therapies to enhance cognitive and emotional function in patients with dementia.