Learning Is Necessary for Training Induced Brain Plasticity

Jason Philipp Lerch¹, Amanpreet Badhwar^2,3, Edith Hamel², John G. Sled¹

Here we used a mouse model of Alzheimers Disease (AD) with impaired spatial learning to test whether a capacity to learn is necessary for training induced MRI detectable volume changes to occur. Mice were trained on two different versions of the Morris Water Maze, fixation perfused and scanned overnight at 32 m isotropic resolution. As hypothesized, hippocampal based spatial learning was impaired in AD mice, whereas striatum dependent non-spatial learning was equivalent between AD and wild-type mice. The data presented herein thus indicates that learning is a requirement for MRI detectable plasticity.