Figure 4.

Behavioral tests for hippocampal-dependent tasks of learning and spatial memory show deficits in AxD mice. A, B, Fear conditioning in Gfap^+/R236H mice shows a decrease in freezing in response to context in female mice at 10 weeks of age (A) and in both males and females at 13 months of age (B). At the later age, male AxD mice also show a significant decrease in conditioning to the cue (*p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, one tailed t test, n ≥ 10 per group). C, Performance in the Morris water maze is also affected, with both male and female mice (10 weeks) showing a lack of preference for the trained quadrant as indicated by the number of platform crossings. During the probe trial Gfap^+/+ male and female mice crossed the platform region significantly more often in the trained quadrant than in any of the other quadrants. Female Gfap^+/R236H mice showed no preference for the trained quadrant, and had significantly fewer trained platform crossings compared with Gfap^+/+ mice. Male mutants showed a difference between the trained and opposite quadrant, but there was not a significant preference compared with the other two quadrants. p values derived from repeated-measures ANOVA with *Tukey's posttest to show significant difference with trained quadrant. ^†p < 0.05 Gfap^+/+ vs Gfap^+/R236H in trained quadrant (t test, n ≥ 11 per group).