Marble burying as compulsive behaviors in male and female mice

Abstract

Marble burying is considered an, albeit controversial, animal model of the compulsive like behaviors of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Hallmark features of OCD patients are similarities and, more prominent, differences from anxiety disorders, e.g., the absence of sex differences and resistance to spontaneous remission. We report an experiment on marble burying by male and female C57/BL6/N mice. Animals were administered either the classic anxiolytic drug, diazepam, that targets the GABA receptor or a "pure" inhibitor of the serotonin transporter, escitalopram, that has been reported to be particularly effective in OCD. A burying paradigm that more precisely mimics the human condition was used, e.g., testing in the home environment, chronic drug exposure and acknowledging individual differences by pre-selecting for high marble burying. Results were that there were no sex differences in groups treated with drugs or in control mice. Both diazepam and escitalopram decreased numbers of marbles buried compared to vehicle-only controls in the absence of correlated changes in anxiety. Diazepam, however, was more effective than escitalopram in suppressing MB. The conclusion is that along with serotonin, GABA is involved in regulating compulsive behaviors. The marble burying paradigm may prove more useful for pharmacological drugs tests of impulsivity or attention deficit because of the involvement of serotonin and GABA in both disorders.

Characterization of a gene-trap knockout mouse model ofScn2aencoding voltage-gated sodium channel Nav1.2

“…Another common innate phenotypic test performed on mouse models is marble burying, although its translational validity has been under debate [43]. Some studies have suggested marble burying could be a neophobic response [44], repetitive/compulsive [29,45], or just a normal behavioral routine of inherent burying behavior [46]. Decreased nesting and marble burying were also observed in a Fragile-X mouse model [47].…”

Transcriptomics of Gabra4 knockout mice reveals common NMDAR pathways underlying autism, memory, and epilepsy

“…However, in the marble burying test, the Gabra4 −/− and WT mice buried approximately the same number of marbles in a 30-min test (Additional file 1: Figure S1E). Marble burying is commonly used to test for repetitive, anxiety, and compulsive-like behaviors [42], but the interpretation is controversial [43]. Considered together with the results from elevated plus maze (EPM) ( Fig.…”

Gut microbiota from persons with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder affects the brain in mice

“…The PCR product was purified using the High-Prep™ PCR kit (MagBio Genomics Inc., Gaithersburg, MD, USA), and libraries with final loading concentrations of 200 ng/μl were prepared for Illumia HiSeq TM sequencing (ATC Biotech AG, Konstanz, Germany), consisting of 46 randomly mixed samples and 2 positive controls (mock communities). The sequenced data was run through the NG-Tax 16S rRNA pipeline [43]. Then as a first control, the composition of the human and mouse samples was compared and plotted in a PCoA figure (see Additional file 1: figure S5 and Additional file 2).…”

“…It has been proposed that burying of harmless objects, like glass marbles, reflects a form of compulsive or impulsive behavior [43]. Performing the marble burying test (MBT), we found no differences between the number of marbles buried by mice ADHD (mean = 1.89; SEM = .91) and by mice control (mean = 1.75; SEM = .61, H(1) = 0.56, p = .453; Additional file 1: Figure S3).…”