Learning in inbred mice: strain-specific abilities across three radial maze problems

Abstract

Mice belonging to the C57BL/6, DBA/2 (DBA), and C3H/He (C3H) strains were compared in three different eight-arm radial maze tasks requiring various degrees of spatial and nonspatial information processing. The results show that, on the standard radial maze task, C57 performed better than DBA, which, in turn, performed better than C3H. Fewer differences in the four-baited arm task and no difference in the cued version task were found between C57 and DBA, while C3H still performed more poorly. The high performance shown by C57 mice in all problems seems to be related to their ability to build up maze-running patterns based upon an optimal proportion of 45 degrees angle turns, according to the demand of the situation. The cognitive and discriminative mechanisms involved in the solving of each task, the sensorial characteristics of the three strains, and the limits of an approach based upon neuroanatomical-behavioral correlations are discussed.