Date:  November 4, 2005 Time: Noon to 1:30 Title: Designing Mouse Behavioral Tasks Relevant to the Symptoms of Autism Speaker: Jacqueline N. Crawley, Ph.D. University of North Carolina School of Medicine National Institutes of Mental Health, NIH Where: Waisman Conference Center Room T216, Second Floor, North Tower About the Talk: Autism is a major mental illness with a strong genetic basis.  The defining symptoms are 1) deficits in reciprocal social interaction, 2) impaired social communication, and 3) stereotyped, ritualistic, repetitive behaviors/narrow restricted interests/resistance to change in routine.  Forefront research tools in mouse behavioral genetics may be useful for discovering genes mediating similar behaviors in mice. We are designing behavioral tests for mice that have conceptual analogies to the defining symptoms of autism.  The core deficit in reciprocal social interaction is being modeled with mouse social tasks.  Our teams at NIMH and the University of North Carolina designed and built a new automated three-chambered apparatus for quantitating social behaviors in mice.  First results show high levels of social approach and normal preference for social novelty in C57BL/6J, C57L/J, DBA/2J, FVB/NJ, C3H/HeJ, AKR/J, and B6129PF2/J mice.  Sociability scores were similar with automated and observer-scored methods, in juveniles and adults, in males and females, and with repeated use of the same individuals.  Three inbred strains, A/J, BALB/cByJ, and BTBR T+tf/J, displayed unusually low levels of social approach.  Repetitive ritualistic behaviors are being evaluated by training mice to form a spatial habit for a food reinforcer in a T-maze, and for an escape platform in the Morris water maze, and then changing the location of the reinforcer, to model the symptom of resistance to change in routine.  Genes responsible for behavioral differences in social interaction, social communication, and resistance to change in mice may highlight new candidates in the search for genes underlying autism.  For Further Information: Contact Teresa Palumbo at 263-5837 or palumbo@waisman.wisc.edu   To download an Adobe Acrobat file of the entire seminar series schedule click here. (pdf schedule coming soon!)