Impairment of conditioned avoidance response in Fyn-kinase deficient mice

In the present study the conditioned avoidance training was carried out in an one way avoidance box.Light(40W) was used as the conditioned stimulus,and the electric shock as the unconditioned stimulus.In order to avoid eliciting hyperreactivity to aversive stimulus,the minimal intensity of electric shock for driving the mouse to run to the safe compartment was used.The results showed that homozygous Fyn kinase deficient mice needed much more trials (79 13±30 10)for reaching the learning criterion than other two groups did.The trials needed to reach the learning criterion for heterozygous and wild type groups were 27 38±7 86 and 34 87±10 90,respectively.The differences between homozygous and other two groups were very significant( P 0 005).However,no deficit of 2 week memory retention of homozygous Fyn kinase deficient mice was found.On the basis of these results it may be concluded that Fyn deficiency impairs associative learning.Moreover,it is supposed that the behavioral model of conditioned avoidance task is useful for behavioral study of mutant mice. [