Orexin knockout mice exhibit impaired spatial working memory

Orexins play a crucial role in the maintenance of arousal and are involved in the modulation of diverse physiological process, including cognitive function. Recent data have suggested that orexins are involved in learning and memory processes. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of orexin deficiency on working memory. A delayed non-matching-to-place T-maze task was used to evaluate spatial working memory in mice lacking orexin prepro-peptide (orexin knockout; KO) and wild-type controls. We demonstrated that the number of correct choices in the orexin KO mice became lower than that of the controls over training. In an object exploration task, the controls explored the displaced object more than the mutants did, whereas this difference was not observed for the nondisplaced objects in either group. The orexin KO mice showed locomotor activity comparable to the control mice in terms of total distance traveled across training in both the object exploration task and the open field test. These findings indicate that the orexin system plays an important role in working memory of spatial cues.

甲蛋白在唤醒的维持中起着至关重要的作用，并参与了各种生理过程（包括认知功能）的调节。最近的数据表明，Orexins参与学习和记忆过程。这项研究的目的是评估Orexin缺乏症对工作记忆的影响。使用延迟的非匹配对位T-Maze任务用于评估缺乏OREXIN前肽肽（Orexin敲除； KO）和野生型对照的小鼠的空间工作记忆。我们证明了Orexin KO小鼠中正确选择的数量低于训练的控制。在对象探索任务中，控件比突变体更多地探索了位移对象，而对于任一组中的非放置对象，没有观察到这种差异。 Orexin KO小鼠的运动活性与对照小鼠的运动活性在对象勘探任务和开放式测试中的训练中都在训练中传播的总距离相当。这些发现表明，Orexin系统在空间提示的工作记忆中起着重要作用。