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The Cerebellum and Spatial Ability: Dissection of Motor and Cognitive Components with a Mouse Model System by Loren A. Martin; Dan Goldowitz; Guy Mittleman is a Neuroscience article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Abstract The cerebellum has recently been linked to spatial navigation, as indicated by the inferior performance of cerebellar mutant or cerebellar lesioned animals in the water maze. The inability to dissociate motor from cognitive deficits in the impaired water maze performance has been a confounding variable in previous studies, however. In this study, we sought to define clearly the role of the cerebellar system in spatial navigation outside of motor control by creating a mouse model of Purkinje cell loss with intact motor ability, and testing these mice in the water maze. To this end, we made aggregation chimeras between __Lc__/+ mice, which lose all Purkinje cells postnatally, and +/+ control mice. __Lc__/+ mice are ataxic and show impaired rotor‐rod performance. By contrast, we show that __Lc__/+ ⇆ +/+ chimeras above a threshold of Purkinje cell loss show no outward signs of motor impairment and demonstrated normal rotor‐rod ability. In the water maze, we found that __Lc__/+ mice showed impaired performance in the place, cue and platform removal tasks, whereas __Lc__/+⇆+/+ chimeras performed similarly to controls in all tasks. We found that the impaired performance in the

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Author

Loren A. Martin; Dan Goldowitz; Guy Mittleman

Publisher

John Wiley and Sons; Wiley (Blackwell Publishing); Blackwell Publishing Inc.; Wiley (ISSN 0953-816X)

Published

2003

Language

EN

Field

Neuroscience (Life Sciences)