Rodent Models

Learning and Memory

1. Water maze learning and memory - rats are placed in a circular chamber and trained to swim to the location of a hidden platform.
2. Olfactory Learning Localization - rats learn to find hidden food associated with unique odor.
3. Spatial non-matching-to-sample - rats get pairs of trials, study and test trial. On study trial, rats are forced into one arm of a Y-maze and receive a food reward. On the test trial, both arms are open and rats are rewarded for selecting the other arm.

Anxiety

1. Social Interaction - Decreased interaction with others of species is an anxiety index
2. Acoustic Startle - startle response to loud sound. The startle response can be modified by repeated presentation (habituation) or by a low intensity sound (pre-pulse inhibition).
3. Light-dark transition test - provides a measures the effect of pharmacologic agents on an animal's tendency to remain in a dark vs. light areas.
4. Defensive conditioned burying
5. Locomotor activity - rodents tend to avoid the center part of an open field arena.

Depression

1. Learned helplessness model of depression - Animals exposed to inescapable foot shock take a longer time to escape, or fail to escape entirely, when subsequently exposed to escapable foot shock; antidepressants acutely decrease escape latency and failures.
2. Uncontrollable vs. controllable stress as a model of depression.
3. Chronic mild stress model of depression - repeated exposure to several unpredictable stresses (e.g., cold.) leads to reduced sucrose preference and sexual behavior.
4. Forced Swim Test - Antidepressants acutely increase the time an animal struggles in a chamber of water; lack of struggling thought to represent a despair-like state.

Epilepsy Models

1. Kindling - model of temporal lobe or cortical epilepsy
2. GBL - (model of partial seizures)
3. Kainic acid and Pilocarpine (models of status epilepticus and seizure induced brain damage)

Drug Addiction

1. Sensitization model of drug abuse liability, including alcohol
2. Intravenous drug self-administration which can be use to study:
   1. initiation and maintenance of drug taking
   2. extinction of drug taking
   3. relapse to drug seeking induced by pharmacological and physical stressors
3. Conditioned place preference procedure Drug Addiction

Schizophrenia

Models include pre-pulse inhibition and behavior (stereotypy) following administration of a variety of compounds that induce psychotic-like behaviors.