Strain differences of selective attention in mice: effect of Kamin blocking on classical fear conditioning.

Selective attention was assessed in mice using a classical fear conditioning procedure. Mice were trained by three regimens involving contextual and/or cued conditioning (classical fear conditioning). Most notably, C57BL/6J mice exhibited salient contextual blocking, whereas DBA/2J and ICR mice did not. This study provides a new method to assess the selective attention of mice and describes an animal model for certain human mental disorders, such as schizophrenia. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.