Title: Standard Operating Procedure – Location Discrimination (LD)
Author: MouseTRAP Team
Date: 11/28/2023
Version: 2
Abstract: The Location Discrimination (LD) task, developed by Stephanie McTighe and colleagues (2009), was originally devised as a procedure for studying pattern separation in rats and mice, and was shown to be sensitive to hippocampal lesions. Pattern separation is a complex neural process necessary to keep similar events, memories, or stimuli separate. The more overlapping features, the more pattern separation is required. The protocol has been successfully implemented in both rats and mice (see Oomen et al., 2013). In LD, two white stimuli are presented at two locations on the screen for each trial, and the subject learns across trials to respond to the correct location. By varying the amount of distance (separation) between the two locations, pattern separation can be assessed; small separations are more similar and require pattern separation processes whereas large separations do not. Using the LD task, pattern separation was demonstrated to be dependent on adult neurogenesis in the DG (Clelland et al., 2009), and further studies have shown that the ability to “pattern separate” in this task correlates with voluntary exercise levels and neurogenesis (Creer et al., 2010).
DOI: 10.58064/9g9x-bh74
Link to Full SOP: LD-v2
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