The hippocampus plays a critical role in the detection of changes in familiar contexts. It accomplishes these functions through a continual process of comparing predicted features of a context or situation to those experienced. A mismatch between expected and experienced decision-making skills has been proven in previous studies that can be shown using the water maze, a test that is widely used to study spatial and working memory. Expectations are processed by specific neuronal networks, including the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, to aid subsequent decision-making and response selection. Mice undergoing reversal learning in the water maze test must process the information relative to the new position of the escape platform and decide whether to navigate towards the latest or to the previous target. From previous studies conducted in the lab, it has been observed that an enhanced inter-individual variability in decision-making during reversal learning. Noteworthy, the decision-making of individual mice can be predicted based on their intrinsic state of anxiety and activity of stress response. Here, we aim at investigating: 1) How individuality affects decision making and 2) The neuronal activity controlling decision making and the selection of specific behavioral responses. We observed that based on their individual behaviour and intrinsic anxiety, the time taken to reach a goal platform as well as the distance covered by each mouse differs from one another.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-475295 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Mishra, Aadyasha |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för biologisk grundutbildning, Centre for Molecular Neurobiology, Hamburg |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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