The mouse attentional-set-shifting task: a method for assaying successful cognitive aging?

Humans exhibit considerable variance in cognitive decline with age, with some exhibiting little disruption and others becoming significantly impaired. In aged rodents, individual differences in spatial memory have been used to identify putative compensatory mechanisms underlying successful hippocampal aging. However, there are few parallel rodent models of cognitive decline in frontal-cortex-mediated functions. We tested the hypothesis that, like aged humans, aged mice would exhibit greater variance in executive function measures, as compared with young mice. We examined the performance of young and aged C57BL/6N mice in the attentional-set-shifting task. Whereas young and old mice did not differ on trials-to-criterion performance, aged mice exhibited significantly greater variance in mean correct latency-selective to the extradimensional shifting stage-as compared with their younger counterparts. Thus, this task may be used to identify mechanisms underlying individual differences in decline of frontal-mediated performances with age.