Name: examining recall memory in infancy and early childhood using the elicited imitation paradigm
Uploaded: 2016-04-28T13:00:00
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm at JoVE.com

The author thanks members of the UCI Memory and Development Lab for their comments on a draft of this manuscript as well as their assistance with manuscript preparation.

The administration instructions provided here are similar to those that have been approved previously by the Institutional Review Board at the University of California, Irvine.
1. Equipment
<ol>
	<li>Test participants in a child-safe room that has an adult-sized table with three chairs (one for the researcher, one for the parent, and one for the child). Alternatively, test children in their homes at their own table or on a portable table provided by the researchers.</li>
	<li>Use a video camera placed on a tripo...

Over the past 30 years, many researchers have used elicited or deferred imitation procedures to examine the development of recall memory in infancy and early childhood. One advantage of imitation procedures is that they are highly versatile: as such, they can be modified and adapted to answer various questions relevant to cognitive development. For example, the elicited imitation procedure has been administered in combination with electrophysiological indices of recognition memory so as to examine relations between encod...

The importance of recall memory cannot be overstated: this ability allows humans to report on mundane aspects of their day, such as what happened at their dentist appointment that morning, as well as their most significant life events, such as their wedding day or the day their child was born. Understanding the development of this ability is complicated, however, in that the verbal report methods used to examine recall memory in adults cannot be employed in studies with preverbal infants and children. For this reason, researchers developed a behavioral method known as elicited or deferred imitation to study recall memory before infants and children can discuss the past using language. This manuscript describes the procedure for implementing one version of the elicited or deferred imitation procedure with infants and children from 6 to 24 months of age. The described procedure is unique in that it that allows for the assessment of memory for the individual components of events as well as memory for temporal order information.
Piaget was among the first to indicate that deferred imitation was an index of representational ability.1 He based this conclusion in part on observations of his own children. For instance, Piaget reported that his 16 month-old daughter, Jacqueline, re-enacted a tantrum that she had seen demonstrated approximately 12 hr earlier by a friend. Importantly, Jacqueline imitated the event in the absence of her friend and after a relatively lengthy delay. For these reasons, Piaget reported that Jacqueline must have encoded and maintained a representation of the event so that she could re-enact it after a delay, in the absence of ongoing perceptual support for what she had witnessed earlier. Based on this observation and others, Piaget stated that the ability to recall the past emerged in the second year of life, as children were concurrently developing the ability to engage in symbolic representation (as evidenced by advances in language and pretend play).
More recently, the elicited or deferred imitation procedure has been standardized and is now extensively used to study recall memory and related abilities in preverbal and early-verbal children. In the procedure developed by Patricia Bauer,2,3 participants interact with three-dimensional materials used to create a novel sequence of events for a brief baseline period. A researcher then demonstrates how to complete the sequence of events, oftentimes with narration. Either immediately (immediate imitation) or after a delay ranging from minutes to months (deferred imitation), the participant is allowed the opportunity to imitate. The data are coded to determine whether the child performs (a) the demonstrated actions and (b) whether they are produced in the correct temporal order relative to baseline or relative to novel control sequences presented at the same session (see reference4 for additional information). Comparable but distinct imitation procedures have been developed and used by other researchers, including Andrew Meltzoff5 and Harlene Hayne.6,7
Multiple arguments have been proposed to indicate that the type of memory assessed in the elicited or deferred imitation procedure is declarative or explicit in nature (instead of non-declarative or implicit; see reference8 for information on the multiple memory systems perspective). Although an exhaustive list of relevant arguments can be found in other sources,9-14 three of the primary points are provided here. One indication that the type of memory being assessed is explicit or declarative in nature is that children talk about events that were experienced behaviorally in the context of the imitation procedure once they gain access to language;15,16 because implicit or non-declarative memories cannot be accessed using language, evidence of later verbal accessibility strongly suggests that the type of memory under investigation is declarative or explicit. Another argument is that individuals with damage to the medial temporal lobe17 or the hippocampus18 are impaired on age-appropriate imitation tasks. Because declarative or explicit memories rely on the functioning of the hippocampus and associated medial temporal lobe structures,19 evidence of reduced performance by individuals with brain damage to these regions suggests that the type of memory assessed is declarative or explicit. The third argument to indicate that imitation assesses recall memory in particular is that there is no perceptual support available to cue memory for temporal order information.13 Although the sequence materials themselves might serve to cue recall for individual target actions, the props used to complete the event provide no useful information as to the temporal order in which the target actions must be completed. As such, temporal order information must be encoded upon event demonstration and maintained over time. For these reasons, the elicited imitation procedure is commonly regarded as the gold standard for studying recall memory in preverbal and early-verbal infants and children (see references10,13,14,20-22).
Use of the elicited imitation procedure has provided a strong foundation for understanding advances in recall memory over the first three years of life. As discussed in previous reviews,4,23,24 developments in recall are evident in the duration of time over which memories are retained and in the robustness of established memories. In terms of duration, researchers have indicated that 6-month-old infants recall one step of a 3-step event sequence for up to 24 hr.6,25 By the time infants are 9 months of age, they remember the individual target actions that comprise a 2-step event sequence for 1 month.26,27 Memory for temporal order information is less robust, such that only approximately 50% of infants remember the order in which a 2-step sequence was previously demonstrated. When infants are 10 months of age, memory for individual target actions is retained for 6 months and temporal order information is maintained for 3 months.27 Only 10 months later, when children are 20 months of age, evidence of memory for temporal order information is apparent over durations of 12 months (and may even be evident for longer &#8211; 12 months was the longest duration over which the participants tested28).
When considering the robustness of recall, age-related changes are apparent in the number of exposures required to support retention and in the ability to flexibly apply learned information. For example, 6-month-olds require as many as 6 exposures to evidence memory over a 24 hr delay,6 whereas 20 month-olds need only one exposure to demonstrate recall after 1 month.29 In terms of representational flexibility, 12 month-olds do not generalize their learning across exemplars that only differ in color. Eighteen month-olds generalize their learning across cues that differ only in color, but do not demonstrate generalization when novel exemplars differ in both color and form. At 21 months, however, generalization across cues is more robust, such that children flexibly apply their learning to novel exemplars that vary on both dimensions.7 Moreover, research suggests that generalization is not born of forgetting: children retain information about the specific features of the original events as they flexibly apply their learning in new situations.30,31
The goal of this manuscript is to describe the elicited imitation procedure developed by Bauer in detail. The method described herein is unique in that the procedure allows for assessment of both memory for individual actions demonstrated by the researcher as well as memory for temporal order. As indicated previously, it is important to note that there is no perceptual information present within the individual props to cue the order in which the specific actions should be completed. Therefore, memory for pairs of actions completed in the correct temporal order is a more stringent test of recall relative to reproduction of individual target actions.
The three-dimensional stimuli used in the elicited imitation procedure are commonly created from commercially-available toys or constructed out of plastic and/or wood. The stimuli depict events that are either novel to the participants (such as making a gong or a merry-go-round) or events with which children may have had previous experience (such as feeding a baby or putting a teddy bear to bed; see references2,3,32 for studies that compare mnemonic performance on familiar versus novel events). Event sequences are further classified as being constrained by enabling relations, having arbitrary associations, or are mixed, such that they include some steps that are linked by enabling relations and others that are arbitrary in nature. Steps of sequences constrained by enabling relations must be completed in a specified temporal order for the sequence end-state to become apparent (although the sequences must be constructed so that children can perform all of the actions in any order). Figure 1 shows a three-step event sequence that is constrained by enabling relations.33 For studies with children younger than 20 months of age, sequences constrained by enabling relations are most often utilized, as children of these ages demonstrate chance performance (i.e., completing fewer than 50% of the demonstrated pairs of actions on sequences with arbitrary associations;34 see references2,28,32,35-37 for studies that compare mnemonic performance on events with different sequence constraints).
<img alt="Figure 1" src="/files/ftp_upload/53347/53347fig1.jpg" /> 
Figure 1: Example of the Three-step Enabling Event Sequence Make a Shaker. The left panel shows the first step of putting the block into one of the nesting cups; the middle panel shows the second step of assembling the nesting cups; the right panel shows the third step of shaking the assembled apparatus. The target actions must be performed in the correct temporal order for the sequence end-state to be realized, although the sequence materials are constructed so that the actions can be completed in any order. Figure and portions of the caption reproduced with permission from references.33,42 <a href="https://www.jove.com/files/ftp_upload/53347/53347fig1large.jpg" target="_blank">Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.</a>
The elicited imitation procedure is most frequently used with infants and children ranging in age from 6 to 24 months (although methodological alterations can be made to accommodate the testing of older children and adults17,18). Typically developing or control participants are commonly recruited so that they are born at term (38 &#177; 2 weeks) and have not experienced any pre- or perinatal conditions that might negatively impact brain development and recall memory, as conditions such as preterm birth38,39 and gestational diabetes40,41 have been associated with reduced recall. In addition, researchers should be aware of the native language of the participants33,42 if verbal labels will be used during sequence demonstration or as retrieval cues.

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			<td class="xl65" height="85" style="height:63.75pt;width:162pt" width="216">Camcorder</td>
			<td class="xl66" style="width:143pt" width="191">Canon</td>
			<td class="xl66" style="width:105pt" width="140">VIXIA HF R600 HD Flash Memory Camcorder</td>
			<td class="xl67" style="width:125pt" width="167">Any commercially-available camcorder that records in color and has audio will suffice</td>
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examining recall memory in infancy and early childhood using the elicited imitation paradigm

The ability to recall the past allows us to report on details of previous experiences, from the everyday to the significant. Because recall memory is commonly assessed using verbal report paradigms in adults, studying the development of this ability in preverbal infants and children proved challenging. Over the past 30 years, researchers have developed a non-verbal means of assessing recall memory known as the elicited or deferred imitation paradigm. In one variant of the procedure, participants are presented with novel three-dimensional stimuli for a brief baseline period before a researcher demonstrates a series of actions that culminate in an end- or goal-state. The participant is allowed to imitate the demonstrated actions immediately, after a delay, or both. Recall performance is then compared to baseline or to performance on novel control sequences presented at the same session; memory can be assessed for the individual target actions and the order in which they were completed. This procedure is an accepted analogue to the verbal report techniques used with adults, and it has served to establish a solid foundation of the nature of recall memory in infancy and early childhood. In addition, the elicited or deferred imitation procedure has been modified and adapted to answer questions relevant to other aspects of cognitive functioning. The broad utility and application of imitation paradigms is discussed, along with limitations of the approach and directions for future research.

A recent elicited imitation study examined whether child language comprehension moderated the relation between the use of supportive adult language at sequence demonstration when recall was assessed behaviorally at encoding (immediate imitation) and at delayed recall 1 week later.33 Sixteen month-old children were presented with 6 novel 3-step event sequences that were constrained by enabling relations. After a brief baseline period, a researcher demonstrated each of two event ...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm at JoVE.com

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm

The elicited imitation procedure was established to examine the development of recall memory in infancy and early childhood. This procedure has been widely used to establish a solid foundation of the nature of recall memory in infancy and early childhood.

The ability to recall the past allows us to report on details of previous experiences, from the everyday to the significant. Because recall memory is ...

examining-recall-memory-infancy-early-childhood-using-elicited

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SCIENTISTS IN ACTION

The Crossmodal Congruency Task as a Means to Obtain an Objective Behavioral Measure in the Rubber Hand Illusion Paradigm

The rubber hand illusion (RHI) is a popular experimental paradigm. Participants view touch on an artificial rubber hand while the participants' own hidden hand is touched. If the viewed and felt touches are given at the same time then this is sufficient to induce the compelling experience that the rubber hand is one's own hand. The RHI can be used to investigate exactly how the brain constructs distinct body representations for one's own body. Such representations are crucial for successful interactions with the external world. To obtain a subjective measure of the RHI, researchers typically ask participants to rate statements such as "I felt as if the rubber hand were my hand". Here we demonstrate how the crossmodal congruency task can be used to obtain an objective behavioral measure within this paradigm.
The variant of the crossmodal congruency task we employ involves the presentation of tactile targets and visual distractors. Targets and distractors are spatially congruent (i.e. same finger) on some trials and incongruent (i.e. different finger) on others. The difference in performance between incongruent and congruent trials - the crossmodal congruency effect (CCE) - indexes multisensory interactions. Importantly, the CCE is modulated both by viewing a hand as well as the synchrony of viewed and felt touch which are both crucial factors for the RHI.
The use of the crossmodal congruency task within the RHI paradigm has several advantages. It is a simple behavioral measure which can be repeated many times and which can be obtained during the illusion while participants view the artificial hand. Furthermore, this measure is not susceptible to observer and experimenter biases. The combination of the RHI paradigm with the crossmodal congruency task allows in particular for the investigation of multisensory processes which are critical for modulations of body representations as in the RHI.

We demonstrate how an objective measure can be employed in the widely employed rubber hand illusion paradigm. This measure is obtained by modifying the well-established crossmodal congruency task. This task allows the investigation of multisensory processes which are critical for modulations of body representations as in the rubber hand illusion.

The rubber hand illusion (RHI) is a popular experimental paradigm. Participants view touch on an artificial rubber hand while the participants' own hidden ...

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions

Goal-directed behavior is often impaired by interference from the external environment, either in the form of distraction by irrelevant information that one attempts to ignore, or by interrupting information that demands attention as part of another (secondary) task goal. Both forms of external interference have been shown to detrimentally impact the ability to maintain information in working memory (WM). Emerging evidence suggests that these different types of external interference exert different effects on behavior and may be mediated by distinct neural mechanisms. Better characterizing the distinct neuro-behavioral impact of irrelevant distractions versus attended interruptions is essential for advancing an understanding of top-down attention, resolution of external interference, and how these abilities become degraded in healthy aging and in neuropsychiatric conditions. This manuscript describes a novel cognitive paradigm developed the Gazzaley lab that has now been modified into several distinct versions used to elucidate behavioral and neural correlates of interference, by to-be-ignored distractors versus to-be-attended interruptors. Details are provided on variants of this paradigm for investigating interference in visual and auditory modalities, at multiple levels of stimulus complexity, and with experimental timing optimized for electroencephalography (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. In addition, data from younger and older adult participants obtained using this paradigm is reviewed and discussed in the context of its relationship with the broader literatures on external interference and age-related neuro-behavioral changes in resolving interference in working memory.

A novel cognitive paradigm is developed to elucidate behavioral and neural correlates of interference by to-be-ignored distractors versus interference by to-be-attended interruptors during a working memory task. In this manuscript, several variants of this paradigm are detailed, and data obtained with this paradigm in younger/older adult participants is reviewed.

Goal-directed behavior is often impaired by interference from the external environment, either in the form of distraction by irrelevant information that ...

Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children &#8211; Working Memory (CABC-WM)

The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children - Working Memory (CABC-WM) is a computer-based battery designed to assess different components of working memory in young school-age children. Working memory deficits have been identified in children with language-based learning disabilities, including dyslexia1,2 and language impairment3,4, but it is not clear whether these children exhibit deficits in subcomponents of working memory, such as visuospatial or phonological working memory. The CABC-WM is administered on a desktop computer with a touchscreen interface and was specifically developed to be engaging and motivating for children. Although the long-term goal of the CABC-WM is to provide individualized working memory profiles in children, the present study focuses on the initial success and utility of the CABC-WM for measuring central executive, visuospatial, phonological loop, and binding constructs in children with typical development. Immediate next steps are to administer the CABC-WM to children with specific language impairment, dyslexia, and comorbid specific language impairment and dyslexia.

Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children &amp;#8211; Working Memory (CABC-WM)

Working memory predicts a significant amount of variance for a variety of cognitive tasks, including speaking, reading, and writing. However, few tools are available to assess working memory in children. We present an innovative, computer-based battery that comprehensively assesses different components of working memory in school-age children.

The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children - Working Memory (CABC-WM) is a computer-based battery designed to assess different components of ...

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood

Effective regulation of emotion is one of the most important skills that develops in childhood. Research interest in this area is expanding, but empirical work has been limited by predominantly correlational investigations of children's skills. Relatedly, a key conceptual challenge for emotion scientists is to distinguish between emotion responding and emotion regulatory processes. This paper presents a novel method to address these conceptual and methodological issues in child samples. An experimental paradigm that assesses the effectiveness with which children regulate emotion is described. Children are randomly assigned to use specific emotion regulation strategies, negative emotions are elicited with film clips, and changes in subsequent psychophysiology index the extent to which emotion regulation is effective. Children are instructed to simply watch the emotion-eliciting film (control), distract themselves from negative emotions (cognitive distraction), or reframe the situation in a way that downplays the importance of the emotional event (cognitive reappraisal). Cardiac physiology, continuously acquired before and during the emotional task, serves as an objective measure of children's unfolding emotional responding while viewing evocative films. Key comparisons in patterns of obtained physiological reactivity are between the control and emotion regulation strategy conditions. Representative results from this approach are described, and discussion focuses on the contribution of this methodological approach to developmental science.

A detailed protocol for an experimental paradigm to assess the effectiveness with which children regulate emotion is described. Children are randomly assigned to use specific emotion regulation strategies, negative emotions are elicited with film clips, and changes in subsequent psychophysiology index the extent to which emotion regulation is effective.

Effective regulation of emotion is one of the most important skills that develops in childhood. Research interest in this area is expanding, but empirical ...

Reinstatement of Drug-seeking in Mice Using the Conditioned Place Preference Paradigm

The present protocol describes the Conditioned Place Preference (CPP) as a model of relapse in drug addiction. In this model, animals are first trained to acquire a conditioned place preference in a drug-paired compartment, and after the post-conditioning test, they perform several sessions to extinguish the established preference. The CPP permits the evaluation of the conditioned rewarding effects of drugs related to environmental cues. Then, the extinguished CPP can be robustly reinstated by the non-contingent administration of a priming dose of the drug, and by exposure to stressful stimuli. Both methods will be explained here. When the animal reinitiates the behavioral response, a reinstatement of the conditioned reward is considered to have taken place.
The main advantages of this protocol are that it is non-invasive, inexpensive, and simple with good validity criteria. In addition, it allows the study of different environmental manipulations, such as stress or diet, which can modulate relapse into drug seeking behaviors. However, one limitation is that if the researcher aims to explore the motivation and primary reinforcing effects of the drug, it should be complemented with self-administration procedures, as they involve operant responses of animals.

This protocol describes the Conditioned Place Preference (CPP) as a model of relapse. This procedure permits the measurement of relapse in laboratory animals, considering the impact of drug-associated environmental cues as craving and relapse in abstaining addicts is currently the focus of drug-abuse treatment programs.

The present protocol describes the Conditioned Place Preference (CPP) as a model of relapse in drug addiction. In this model, animals are first trained to ...

An Objective and Child-friendly Assessment of Arm Function by Using a 3-D Sensor

Progressive and irreversible muscle atrophy characterizes Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and other similar muscle disorder diseases. Objective assessment of muscle functions is an essential and important, although challenging, prerequisite for successful clinical trials. Current clinical rating scales restrain the movement abnormalities to certain predefined coarse-grained individual items. The Kinect 3-D sensor has emerged as a low-cost and portable motion sensing technology used to capture and track people&#39;s movement in many medical and research fields. A novel approach using this 3-D sensor was developed and a game-like test was designed to objectively measure the upper limb function of patients with SMA. The prototype test targeted joint movement capability. While sitting in a virtual scene, the patient was instructed to extend, flex, and lift the whole arm in order to reach and place some objects. Both kinematic and spatiotemporal characteristics of upper limb movement were extracted and analyzed, e.g., elbow extension and flexion angles, hand velocity, and acceleration. The first study included a small cohort of 18 ambulant SMA patients and 19 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. A comprehensive analysis of arm movement was achieved; however, no significant difference between the groups were found due to the mismatch of patient&#39;s capability and the test difficulty. Based on this experience, a second version of the test consisting of a modified version of the first game with increased difficulties and a second game targeting muscle endurance were designed and implemented. The new test has not been conducted in any patient groups yet. Our work has demonstrated the potential capability of the 3-D sensor in assessing such muscle function and suggested an objective approach to complement the clinical rating scales.

An objective measure of muscle functions is challenging especially in children. Based on a commercially available digital 3-D sensor, a child-friendly gaming test was developed to assess upper limb function for clinical trials.

Progressive and irreversible muscle atrophy characterizes Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and other similar muscle disorder diseases. Objective assessment ...

Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language

In a typical eye tracking study using the visual world paradigm, participants' eye movements to objects or pictures in the visual workspace are recorded via an eye tracker as the participant produces or comprehends a spoken language describing the concurrent visual world. This paradigm has high versatility, as it can be used in a wide range of populations, including those who cannot read and/or who cannot overtly give their behavioral responses, such as preliterate children, elderly adults, and patients. More importantly, the paradigm is extremely sensitive to fine grained manipulations of the speech signal, and it can be used to study the online processing of most topics in language comprehension at multiple levels, such as the fine grained acoustic phonetic features, the properties of words, and the linguistic structures. The protocol described in this article illustrates how a typical visual world eye tracking study is conducted, with an example showing how the online processing of some semantically complex statements can be explored with the visual world paradigm.

The visual world paradigm monitors participants' eye movements in the visual workspace as they are listening to or speaking a spoken language. This paradigm can be used to investigate the online processing of a wide range of psycholinguistic questions, including semantically complex statements, such as disjunctive statements.

In a typical eye tracking study using the visual world paradigm, participants' eye movements to objects or pictures in the visual workspace are recorded ...

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism

Sentence comprehension relies on the ability to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. However, there is currently a paucity of research exploring how preschool children with autism understand sentences using different types of cues. The mechanisms underlying sentence comprehension remains largely unclear. The present study presents a protocol to examine the sentence comprehension abilities of preschool children with autism. More specifically, a visual world paradigm of eye-tracking is used to explore the moment-to-moment sentence comprehension in the children. The paradigm has multiple advantages. First, it is sensitive to the time course of sentence comprehension and thus can provide rich information about how sentence comprehension unfolds over time. Second, it requires minimal task and communication demands, so it is ideal for testing children with autism. To further minimize the computational burden of children, the present study measures eye movements that arise as automatic responses to linguistic input rather than measuring eye movements that accompany conscious responses to spoken instructions.

We present a protocol to examine the use of morphological cues during real-time sentence comprehension by children with autism.

Sentence comprehension relies on the ability to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. However, there is ...

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

We discuss the use of the preferential looking paradigm in eye tracking studies in order to study how infants develop, understand, and attend to the world around them. Eye tracking is a safe and non-invasive way to collect gaze data from infants, and the preferential looking paradigm is simple to design and only requires the infant to be attending to the screen. By simultaneously showing two visual stimuli that differ in one dimension, we can assess whether infants show different looking behavior for either stimulus, thus demonstrating sensitivity to that difference. The challenges in such experimental approaches are that experiments must be kept brief (no more than 10 min) and be carefully controlled such that the two stimuli differ in only one way. The interpretation of null results must also be carefully considered. In this paper, we illustrate a successful example of an infant eye tracking study with a preferential looking paradigm to discover that 6-month-olds are sensitive to linguistic cues in a signed language despite having no prior exposure to signed language, suggesting that infants possess intrinsic or innate sensitivities to these cues.

Eye tracking studies using a preferential looking paradigm can be used to study infants&#39;&#160;emerging understanding of, and attention to, their external visual world.

We discuss the use of the preferential looking paradigm in eye tracking studies in order to study how infants develop, understand, and attend to the world ...

Analysis of Learning and Memory Ability in an Alzheimer's Disease Mouse Model using the Morris Water Maze

A Morris water maze (MWM) experiment forces experimental animals to swim and learn to find a platform hidden in the water. It is widely used in scientific research to assess the learning and memory of animals. Due to the extensive use of the MWM test, visual experimental protocols are essential for researchers. This manuscript uses the latest studies to introduce the protocol of the MWM test. Alzheimer&#8217; Disease (AD) is characterized by a progressive loss of memory and cognitive function. An alternative and complementary treatment used for AD is Manual Acupuncture (MA). To assess the learning and memory ability of AD model mice, the MWM test was conducted. The visible platform trial, hidden platform trial, probe trial, and reversal trial of MWM were used to evaluate spatial learning and memory ability. In the visible platform trial, the swimming speed and escape latency of mice in different groups was not significantly different. In the hidden platform and reversal trials, the AD group showed a long escape latency. The escape latency decreased significantly after the MA treatment. Low platform crossover number and the proportion of time in the SW quadrant in the probe trial increased after the MA treatment (p &#60; 0.05 or p &#60; 0.01). The results of the MWM tests suggest that MA can effectively improve the spatial learning and memory abilities of AD model mice. Rigorous experimental operations provided assurance of the reliability of the results.

Analysis of Learning and Memory Ability in an Alzheimer&#039;s Disease Mouse Model using the Morris Water Maze

Herein, a protocol to conduct the Morris water maze tests to evaluate the ability of learning and memory of Alzheimer&#8217;s Disease model mice and to assess the effect of manual acupuncture for treating them is described.

A Morris water maze (MWM) experiment forces experimental animals to swim and learn to find a platform hidden in the water. It is widely used in scientific ...