Figure 1
Psychiatric-relevant behavioral deficits in the SCA1 mice. (a) Design of the behavioral characterization experiments. D1 indicates the starting day of the experiment (i.e. 6, 10, 17 or 26 weeks of age). It includes the elevated plus maze test (EPM), the open field test (OF), object-location-memory test (OLM), the acoustic startle response and prepulse inhibition (ASR), the gait analysis, the rotarod test, the Morris water-maze test with the hidden (MWM I) and visually marked (MWM II) platform, the water T-maze test (WTM) and the forced swimming test (FST). See Methods for the numbers of animals in each of the experimental groups. (b) Representative OF trajectories for the WT and SCA1 mice (aged 6 weeks). (c) Thigmotaxis in the OF (i.e. relative distance <5 cm from the arena walls), indicating anxiety-like behavior. (d) Relative change in the startle response amplitude following a prepulse stimulus, reflecting prepulse inhibition. (e) Relative immobility time during the FST, indicating depressive-like behavior. (f) Relative 1% sucrose consumption during the sucrose preference test, indicating depressive-like behavior (N = 21 [WT] and 7 [SCA1] animals). Box-whisker plots indicating the inter-quartile (IQ) intervals (box), 1.5* IQ range (whiskers) and medians (middle line). Each point = 1 animal (c–f). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. The statistical significances are based on the permutational t-test. See Suppl. Table S1 for the detailed results and Suppl. Data S1 for raw data.
