Water-Reaching Platform for Longitudinal Assessment of Cortical Activity and Fine Motor Coordination Defects in a Huntington Disease Mouse Model.

ABSTRACT: Huntington disease (HD), caused by dominantly inherited expansions of a CAG repeat results in characteristic motor dysfunction. Although gross motor defects have been extensively characterized in multiple HD mouse models using tasks such as rotarod and beam walking, less is known about forelimb deficits. We develop a high-throughput alternating reward/nonreward water-reaching task and training protocol conducted daily over approximately two months to simultaneously monitor forelimb impairment and mesoscale cortical changes in GCaMP activity, comparing female zQ175 (HD) and wild-type (WT) littermate mice, starting at ∼5.5 months. Behavioral analysis of the water-reaching task reveals that HD mice, despite learning the water-reaching task as proficiently as wild-type mice, take longer to lea

SUBMITTER: Wang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9833054 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature