Day-level associations between protective behavioral strategies and alcohol consequences among young adults enrolled vs. not enrolled in college.

Neurodegenerative dementias are devastating incurable diseases that affect 55 million people worldwide and cause severe disability and death []. Mouse models are used for studying mechanisms and testing new therapies; they have similar cortical architecture, many conserved brainstem projections, and abundant available genetic tools [–]. Behavioral tasks in rodents are widely used to evaluate short-term memory deficits in models of Alzheimer’s dementia (AD). However, fewer studies focus on non-memory aspects of cognition, such as executive dysfunction, that are common features of other forms of dementia, including frontal variant AD, Lewy body dementias, frontotemporal dementias, vascular dementia, and normal pressure hydrocephalus [–]. Assays that use innate motivation like novelty and memory of an escape location (e.g. novel object recognition, Morris Water Maze) do not require extensive training [–]. In these innate tasks, short-term memory retention is often used as the key outcome measure [, ]. However, naturalistic tasks also offer the opportunity to test active acquisition and motivation, rather than only retention. This includes outcomes impacted by executive function (e.g., learning rate, working memory, behavioral flexibility, sequencing, planning) and motivation (e.g., perseveration, perseverance, exploration, anxiety). Both motivation and executive dysfunction can be key features of neurodegenerative diseases [, ]. Studies probing executive functions often require extended training protocols, expensive operant chambers, or strong motivators []. To improve our ability to detect a wider range of behavioral phenotypes, we chose to optimize the Barnes Maze, a widely used spatial learning and memory task originally developed by Carol Barnes for rats []. This land-based maze is used in hundreds of published research articles yearly. Specific benefits are that it: 1) resembles naturalistic rodent behavior (exploration and remembering hiding locations); 2) does not require food or water motivation; 3) is comparatively low-stress; 4) can be adapted for mice with motor deficits (no forced swimming), and 5) is widely available and relatively inexpensive to build [, –].