LEARNING IN INBRED MICE - STRAIN-SPECIFIC ABILITIES ACROSS 3 RADIAL MAZE PROBLEMS

Mice belonging to the C57BL/6, DBA/2 (DBA), and C3H/He (C3H) strains w ere 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 bet ter than DBA, which, in turn, performed better than C3H. Fewer differe nces 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 p oorly. The high performance shown by C57 mice in all problems seems to be related to their ability to build up maze-running patterns based u pon an optimal proportion of 45-degrees angle turns, according to the demand of the situation. The cognitive and discriminative mechanisms i nvolved in the solving of each task, the sensorial characteristics of the three strains, and the limits of an approach based upon neuroanato mical-behavioral correlations are discussed.