Ethological and multi-behavioral analysis of learning and memory performance in laboratory rodent models.

Behavioral studies using animal models have widely contributed to advancing our understanding of the neuroregulatory mechanisms of human cognitive states and disorders. A variety of behavioral tests and theoretical models have been developed that provide a standardized toolbox of behavioral test paradigms available to researchers, and thus allow rapid progress in studies of the molecular-genetic bases of behavior relevant to neurocognitive diseases. However, a growing effort to utilize standardized paradigms has overlooked the diverse behavioral characteristics of test rodents expressed in standardized test situations. This review describes two popular test paradigms for cognitive assessment in rodents: social recognition and fear conditioning tasks. An extensive assessment of observed behavior during testing indicates a need to further elucidate the sequential strategic processes employed by test animals in conjunction with the use of standardized test settings and dependent variables. The present study calls specific attention to the considerable but improvable problem of the appropriateness and applicability of these standardized test paradigms; it thereby unravels the essential contribution of multi-behavioral assessment to further advancing neuroscience research using rodent behavioral models.