Figure 2. AAV-CREB ameliorates spatial memory deficits in aged animals.
(a) Performance on visible platform over eight trials (inset), and hidden platform over 4 sessions of training (five trials each session; one session per day) for young animals and aged animals that received control AAV-GFP, or AAV-CREB virus (n = 7, 7, 17, 15). All animals were capable of learning the visible and hidden platform task. While young animals performed better than aged on hidden platform training, no virus-based differences were observed. (b) Performance of young and aged animals that received AAV-GFP or AAV-CREB on probe trials run 1 hr after each session of hidden platform training, as well as 1 day and 4 days after the end of training (n = 7, 7, 17, 15). A difference was found between young and aged animals, but no effect of virus was observed. (c) Aged rats given control AAV-GFP vector were significantly impaired on memory for the platform, as measured by a probe test conducted 4 days after the end of hidden platform training. Dashed line indicates the average performance of young rats minus 1 SD. (d) Aged rats classified as aged impaired (AI: n = 9) performed significantly worse on the probe test conducted 4 days after the end of the hidden platform training as compared to young adult (n = 14), aged unimpaired (AU: n = 8) and aged rats given AAV-CREB (n = 15). No significant differences were observed between young adult, AU and aged CREB rats. Results in a and b represent mean ± SEM, horizontal bars in c and d represent mean, c represents mean ± SD or mean only.