Genetic Analysis of Active Avoidance Performance in Mice

Abstract

Mice of two inbred strains, C57BL/6J and DBA/2J, and the F1 hybrid of a cross between them were trained in an active avoidance jump-up task under distributed practice conditions. Significant differences in the performance of mice of the two strains were observed, with relatively poor performance by DBA/2J mice and relatively good performance by C57BL/6 mice. The performance of F₁ hybrid mice did not differ significantly from DBA/2J mice. Crosses were made to produce segregating generations of mice. Their performance supported a single-locus model of inheritance for active avoidance jump-up behavior. Under these experimental conditions the dominant allelle (Aap^d) was associated with poor performance while homozygosity for the recessive allele (Aap^b) was associated with superior performance.