Transcript – Striatal and Reward-Related Function in a Mouse Model for Fragile X Syndrome

Fragile X syndrome is a syndrome, a form of autism caused by mutation of the former one gene that results in the deficiency of the Fragile X mental retardation protein. In the study, we utilized FMI one knock on mice as models for Fragile X syndrome and observe the effects of drugs, of abuse and natural reinforcers on reward related behaviors associated with the striatum. In addition, we wanted to explore the function of ethylmercury and cholinergic cells and how its absence may affect social interaction in ever more Knock-Out and condition onaka compared to a wild type mice. In our first experiment, we gave mice the opportunity to intervene as they self administer cocaine, the former one Naggar learned like their wild type littermates during acquisition and extinction. But the FMI one knock on mice had fewer nose posts in the wild type and reduce the dose as seen in graffiti or made them work harder for it as seen in graffiti like we saw in the cocaine self administration. The more one knock out mice learn to apparently administer food normally as seen in graphs G and H. But unlike in cocaine ibsa knock on my side respond. Normally when food concentration was very as seen in graph I individuals with Fragile X syndrome often display social reward deficits. And given that we had observed cocaine related reward deficits in this fragile X mouse model, we thought it’d be interesting to measure social reinforcement while we did not observe an overwhelming difference and ever more. One knock out a wild type mouse social reward learning as seen in Graph G when we deleted it from our piece, specifically from the cholinergic brain cells in mice, we observed a strong trend towards a significant deficit in this behavior. In summary, our findings suggest that ethylmercury helps facilitate drug addiction behaviors but not natural reward related function and may potentially play a role in social behavior when everyone appears absent from cholinergic cells in the brain.