Abstract
Motor deficits are a characteristic consequence of striatal damage, whether induced by experimental lesions, or in genetic models of Huntington’s disease involving polyglutamine expansion in the huntingtin protein. With the growing power of genetic models and genetic tools for analysis, mice are increasingly the animal model of choice, and objective quantitative measures of motor performance are in demand for experimental analysis of disease pathophysiology, progression, and treatment. We present methodological protocols for six of the most common tests of motor function—ranging from spontaneous activity, locomotor coordination, balance, and skilled limb use—that are simple, effective, efficient, and widely used for motor assessment in Huntington’s disease research in experimental mice.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Magendie F (1823) Note sur les fonctions des corps striés et des tuberclules quadrijumeaux. J Physiol Exp Pathol 3:376–381
Laursen AM (1963) Corpus striatum. Acta Physiol Scand Suppl 211:1–106
Huntington G (1872) On chorea. Med Surg Rep 26:317–321
Mangiarini L, Sathasivam K, Seller M et al (1996) Exon 1 of the HD gene with an expanded CAG repeat is sufficient to cause a progressive neurological phenotype in transgenic mice. Cell 87:493–506
Crawley JN (2000) What’s wrong with my mouse?: behavioral phenotyping of transgenic and knockout mice. Wiley, New York
Carter RJ, Lione LA, Humby T et al (1999) Characterisation of progressive motor deficits in mice transgenic for the human Huntington’s disease mutation. J Neurosci 19:3248–3257
Dunnett SB, Bensadoun JC, Pask T et al (2003) Assessment of motor behaviour in transgenic mice. In: Crawley JN (ed) Mouse behaviour phenotyping. Society for Neuroscience, Washington, pp 1–12
Brooks SP, Dunnett SB (2009) Tests to assess motor phenotype in mice: a user’s guide. Nat Rev Neurosci 10:519–529
Brooks SP, Trueman RC, Dunnett SB (2012) Assessment of motor coordination and balance in mice. Curr Protoc Mouse Biol 2:37–53
Dunham NW, Miya TS (1957) A note on a simple apparatus for detecting neuroligical deficit in rats and mice. J Am Pharm Assoc 46:208–209
Wallace JE, Krauter EE, Campbell BA (1980) Motor and reflexive behavior in the aging rat. J Gerontol 35:364–270
Schallert T, Woodlee MT, Fleming SM (2002) Disentangling multiple types of recovery from brain injury. In: Krieglstein J, Klumpp S (eds) Pharmacology of cerebral ischemia. Medpharm Scientific Publishers, Stuttgart, pp 201–216
Aguiar P, Mendonca L, Galhardo V (2007) OpenControl: a free opensource software for video tracking and automated control of behavioral mazes. J Neurosci Methods 166:66–72
Antunes M, Biala G (2012) The novel object recognition memory: neurobiology, test procedure, and its modifications. Cogn Process 13:93–110
Klein A, Sacrey LA, Whishaw IQ et al (2012) The use of rodent skilled reaching as a translational model for investigating brain damage and disease. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 36:1030–1042
Whishaw IQ, O’connor WT, Dunnett SB (1986) The contributions of motor cortex, nigrostriatal dopamine and caudate-putamen to skilled forelimb use in the rat. Brain 109:805–843
Montoya CP, Campbell-Hope LJ, Pemberton KD et al (1991) The “staircase test”: a measure of independent forelimb reaching and grasping abilities in rats. J Neurosci Methods 36:219–228
Baird AL, Meldrum A, Dunnett SB (2001) The staircase test of skilled reaching in mice. Brain Res Bull 54:243–250
Dunnett SB, Carter RJ, Watts C et al (1998) Striatal transplantation in a transgenic mouse model of Huntington’s disease. Exp Neurol 154:31–40
Kloth V, Klein A, Loettrich D et al (2006) Colour-coded pellets increase the sensitivity of the staircase test to differentiate skilled forelimb performances of control and 6-hydroxydopamine lesioned rats. Brain Res Bull 70:68–80
Trueman RC, Brooks SP, Jones L et al (2008) Time course of choice reaction time deficits in the HdhQ92/Q92 knock-in mouse model of Huntington’s disease in the operant Serial Implicit Learning Task (SILT). Behav Brain Res 189:317–324
Fernagut PO, Diguet E, Stefanova N et al (2002) Subacute systemic 3-nitropropionic acid intoxication induces a distinct motor disorder in adult C57Bl/6 mice: behavioural and histopathological characterisation. Neuroscience 114:1005–1017
Brooks SP, Jones L, Dunnett SB (2012) Behavioural, anatomical and genetic characterisation of mouse and rat models of Huntington’s disease. Brain Res Bull 88:81–285
Smith GA, Heuer A, Klein A et al (2012) Amphetamine-induced dyskinesia in transplanted hemiparkinsonian mice. J Parkinsons Dis 2:107–113
Park Y-G, Choi JH, Lee C et al (2015) Heterogeneity of tremor mechanisms assessed by tremor-related cortical potential in mice. Mol Brain 8:3. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13041-13015-10093-13042
Kudo T, Schroeder A, Loh DH et al (2011) Dysfunctions in circadian behavior and physiology in mouse models of Huntington’s disease. Exp Neurol 228:80–90
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Dunnett, S.B., Brooks, S.P. (2018). Motor Assessment in Huntington’s Disease Mice. In: Precious, S., Rosser, A., Dunnett, S. (eds) Huntington’s Disease. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1780. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7825-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7825-0_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-7824-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-7825-0
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols