Chromosomal 16p11.2 deletion syndrome frequently presents with intellectual disabilities, speech delays, and autism. Here we investigated the Dolmetsch line of 16p11.2 heterozygous (+/2) mice on a range of cognitive tasks with different neuroanatomical substrates. Robust novel object recognition deficits were replicated in two cohorts of 16p11.2+/2 mice, confirming previous findings. A similarly robust deficit in object location memory was discovered in +/2, indicating impaired spatial novelty recognition. Generalizability of novelty recognition deficits in +/2 mice extended to preference for social novelty. Robust learning deficits and cognitive inflexibility were detected using Bussey-Saksida touchscreen operant chambers. During acquisition of pairwise visual discrimination, +/2 mice required significantly more training trials to reach criterion than wild-type littermates (+/+), and made more errors and correction errors than +/+. In the reversal phase, all +/+ reached criterion, whereas most +/2 failed to reach criterion by the 30-d cutoff. Contextual and cued fear conditioning were normal in +/2. These cognitive phenotypes may be relevant to some aspects of cognitive impairments in humans with 16p11.2 deletion, and support the use of 16p11.2+/2 mice as a model system for discovering treatments for cognitive impairments in 16p11.2 deletion syndrome.Recurrent heterozygous deletions of a 600-kb segment on human chromosome 16 is found in 0.4% of individuals with intellectual disability (Bijlsma et al. 2009;Hanson et al. 2015) and 0.6% of individuals with autism (Marshall et al. 2008;Weiss et al. 2008;Walsh and Bracken 2011). 16p11.2 deletion syndrome presents with a range of mild-to-severe cognitive impairments, with IQ scores averaging 2 SDs lower than controls, and a confirmed diagnosis of autism in 15% of affected individuals (Hanson et al.
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